The Queensland government has come to the financial aid of the state’s strawberry industry on the back of a needle contamination scare.
The Queensland government has pledged $1 million to the state’s crisis-hit strawberry farmers as they dump truckloads of fruit over a needle contamination scare.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has announced the $1 million fund to help farmers bounce back and restore consumer confidence after the discovery of sewing needles in punnets of the fruit.
“The sabotage of our strawberry industry is not just an attack on hard-working growers and workers, but it reaches into almost every home and school lunch box,” she told parliament on Tuesday.
Queensland’s 150 strawberry farmers produce 60 million punnets a year worth $160 million.
Horticulture body Growcom welcomed the funding announcement and called on other states to help out growers.
Growcom chief executive David Thomson says while the Queensland strawberry season is about to close, growers in NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania are coming into season.
At least one Queensland grower will install metal detectors to check his produce as the industry deals with the fallout.
Glass House Mountains farmer Leonard Smith said the safety measure would cost him about $30,000, but would hopefully get the rest of this season’s fruit back on supermarket shelves.
However, he said the detectors wouldn’t work if the contamination was occurring offsite.
Mr Smith’s farm was forced to burn off 500,000 unsellable plants on the weekend as it was cheaper to destroy them than pick them.
He is not alone.
Other growers have had to cut back on staff while footage posted online shows produce being dumped in truckloads.
Queensland Strawberry Growers Association vice president Adrian Schultz said “commercial terrorism” was bringing an industry to its knees.
Queensland Strawberry Industry Officer Jennifer Rowlings said only a small number of the 800,000 punnets the industry produced a day had been affected.
“This issue has attracted attention as far away as Russia and the UK, and as a result a number of our trade partners have either already blocked Australian strawberry imports or are talking about doing so,” Ms Rowlings said in a statement.
“Apart from the original incident ten days ago where a consumer sought medical assistance, needles have been confirmed in only a small number of punnets, resulting in instructions by Queensland Health to withdraw three brands from sale.”
