Apr 7, 2007

Taiwan Reopens Borders to U.S. Apples

The customer is always right.

That adage, almost a cliché, certainly describes the attitude of many apple producers who seek export markets. Why else would they go to such lengths to get them?

In recent months, apple growers in the Pacific Northwest have done their share as they try to win back export markets in Taiwan and Mexico. In the case of Mexico, years of effort resulted in frustration as the border remained fortified by a high protective tariff against U.S. Delicious apples. In the case of Taiwan, the market opened again April 27 after being closed to U.S. apples for four months and after a new, more rigid protocol for growing and packing apples was negotiated.

U.S. apple exports to Taiwan were cut off since last December after codling moth larvae were found in four apples. It took four months of effort to regain entry, notice of which came in a letter from the economic division of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office.

In that letter, Francis Liang said: “The U.S. apple industry should address concerns identified by BAPHIQ (in an) on-site verification visit of March 13-19, 2005, and strictly follow the newly amended ‘Systems Approach Work Plan for the Exportation of Apples from the United States to Taiwan.’”

BAPHIQ is the Taiwanese Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine.

The work plan outlines the procedures that must be followed to assure that no live codling moth larvae arrive in Taiwan in apples imported from the United States.

Taiwan suspended imports from the U.S. last Dec. 21, just as the peak shipping season for a massive crop was starting, after a codling moth larva was found in a shipment from Oregon.

BAPHIQ had previously found codling moths in three separate shipments from Washington and California on Sept. 1, Oct. 7 and Oct. 14. The last two discoveries were counted as one incident in a “three strike” system. Taiwan and the United States had agreed two years earlier to a “three strikes and out” policy; three codling moth finds trigger a halt to exports.

This was the second time exports had been stopped because of codling moth findings, the previous one two years earlier in 2002.

This time, shipments were halted in December and were to last until U.S. shippers found a protocol that Taiwan would accept. Taiwanese protocols against codling moths are stringent because some apples and pears are grown there, in an environment now free of the pest.

The notice restored an important market for West Coast apples, especially for large Fujis. The suspension hit Washington particularly hard, since Taiwan is that state’s top export market. It exports about 4 million boxes of apples to Taiwan in a normal year. This year, the West had a very large crop of apples to sell, needed to export 90 percent of them and lost an important market.

There are a number questions that could be asked at this point, including:

• Does it make sense for Taiwan to take such stringent measures to protect against importation of codling moth?
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• Is the protocol an example of a phytosanitary barrier erected as a protectionist measure with little redeeming merit?
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• Did Taiwan overreact by closing its borders to U.S. apples?
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Mike Willett, the vice president for scientific affairs at the Northwest Horticultural Council, took a stab at answering these difficult political questions.

“I was surprised that Taiwan would cut off imports of U.S. apples,” he said. “Washington has been sending 190 million or more apples to Taiwan every year for 25 years. The first time a codling moth larva was detected was in 2002. So, in 25 years, a total of five larvae have been found.

“Four months seems like a long time to close the border, considering that no technical violations of the work plan were discovered. We had unusual weather here last year, which may have resulted in more, larger codling moth larvae. Still, the zero tolerance standard is very high. We don’t know what one or two or three larvae in that many apples really means.”

Willett said that Northwest growers would have sold 350 million apples to Taiwan this season had the ban not been enacted.

Does it make sense for Taiwan to take such stringent measures to protect against importation of codling moth? Here are some interesting facts:

Codling moth originated in the Middle East more than 2,500 years ago and has spread to almost every place in the world where conditions are right for apples to grow. Why are they not in Taiwan?

Taiwan is a tropical place where apples don’t normally grow. Both apples and codling moths require a chilling season. Elevation, however, can provide the same effect as latitude, and Taiwan has mountains up to 12,000 feet high. Apple production also is taking place in other mountainous tropical countries such as Thailand, the Philippines and in South and Central America.

On their mountainsides, Taiwanese can and do grow apples, about 10,000 tons a year.

But the 23 million people of Taiwan also import 94 percent of the 143,000 tons of apples they eat, and 80,000 of those come from Washington.

A question that might be asked is, would a few codling moth larvae imported into a tropical island pose a credible threat of establishing this pest in mountainside orchards where the flow of apples is out, not in?

The world, of course, has plenty of apple producers waiting in the wings for markets to open. Other producing countries also have to live within the phytosanitary standards. And certainly Taiwan is not the only country with such standards. Japanese protocols on codling moth and fire blight are so stringent and expensive to meet they have virtually kept U.S. apples out.

For that reason, the U.S. apple industry, working with the USDA and the government of Taiwan, developed and revised the protocol called the “systems approach work plan.”

“The biggest change in the latest protocol is the training requirement for packing house workers,” Willett said.

The new agreement calls for apple-packing employees to receive classes and literature about spotting the moth and the damage larvae create.

The protocol is about 3,000 words long and sets management standards and specifies management activities for orchardists, mandates field inspections for orchards, storages and packing houses, sets requirements for packing houses for sorting apples and evaluating the effectiveness of sorting procedures, and establishes export inspection procedures.

Growers also will be required to increase orchard inspections. Regulatory officials are required to inspect 3 percent of the cartons in a shipment, inspecting every apple in those cartons and cutting some fruit – and all suspect fruit -– in that carton.

But the real burden falls on the packinghouses, which must have two trained technicians who are to carefully watch the cull bins, selecting at least 600 apples a day and cutting any suspect fruits, at least 60 per day. Should 1 percent of the 600 apples show wormholes, all fruit from that grower lot run will be ineligible for export for the rest of the season -– unless a precautionary methyl bromide fumigation is conducted.

Everything must be properly labeled and records kept.

The reason for all this effort: The market -– four million boxes of apples, and the customer is always right.

But frustration is growing in the apple industry. Denise Yockey, executive director of the Michigan Apple Commission, said it may be time for the apple industry to seek U.S. government intercession in the Mexican situation.

Albion, N.Y., apple grower George Lamont said he doesn’t think it will help.

“Free trade is a great idea,” he said. “Our government sets up free trade agreements but doesn’t manage them. We are getting whipped every which way.”

The Mexican growers charged American growers with dumping apples. That resulted in a tariff and an investigation by the Mexican government – which took six years. And just as the border was set to open, a Mexican court issued an injunction that vetoed the deal.

“The Mexican apple growers will never accept a level playing field,” Lamont said.

Is that how NAFTA and free trade are supposed to work?

Does the Taiwan protocol make sense when codling moth larvae would all be killed with two months of CA storage?

Lamont said that phytosanitary concerns are legitimate -– but that the U.S. needs to be as concerned as other countries. Other countries have a lot of pests we don’t, he said, mentioning China and the problem of alternaria on pears.

“I’m concerned that the Chinese lack the ability to clean up their act, and we can’t seem to catch it at the dock.”

New regulations greatly increasing inspections of fruit and vegetable imports into Europe are “just a way of putting boulders in the way,” he said.