Fruits With Positive COVID-19 Detected Previously, Kiwi Exports To China Continued

Illustration of Zespri kiwi. (Wikimedia Commons/Walter Grassroot)

JAKARTA - Exports of kiwifruit produced by Zespri, New Zealand to China will continue as usual, after previously having found a kiwi fruit that was positive for COVID-19.

On Monday, Zespri Chief Executive Dan Mathieson said work with authorities was ongoing and all subsequent Covid-19 tests were negative.

While some short-term impact is expected, exports of Zespri's kiwifruit production will continue as usual, he said.

"All shipments to China have been processed according to standard protocols, including COVID-19 testing and disinfectants to provide added reassurance. This is the same process that all previous imports into China have followed," he explained as reported by Stuff on Sept. 27.

"Our team in China is also working hard with our partners to ensure the trust is maintained, our robust industrial health and food safety processes are understood, and that any impact on sales is minimized."

Mathieson said the New Zealand kiwifruit industry adheres to strict safety standards. To date, there have been no reports of COVID-19 cases in plantations or storage warehouses.

On Friday, Zespri said it had launched an "emergency management plan", after a number of its fruit tested positive for the virus and stocks were pulled from some Chinese supermarket shelves.

In an email to the kiwifruit industry, Mathieson confirmed the positive Zespri fruit was from last month's shipment. And, all subsequent tests came back negative.

Zespri kiwi illustration. (Wikimedia Commons/4028mdk09)

The fruit that tested positive was shipped from Tauranga on August 16, after the day before the latest outbreak of COVID-19 in New Zealand. It had tested negative for COVID-19 in Shanghai, and was 'disinfected according to standard Chinese customs protocols before cleaning and distribution'.

The positive test came from fruit held by a second-tier distributor in Hefei Province, neighboring Jiangsu province.

Meanwhile, citing RNZ, although the World Health Organization (WHO) says it is highly unlikely that people can catch COVID-19 from food or food packaging during the pandemic, China has implemented strict COVID-19 food safety guidelines. This includes testing of imported products.

Lincoln University director of agribusiness and food marketing Nic Lees said Chinese authorities are actively looking into every possible pathway of COVID-19, so such detections are not uncommon there. According to him, there is unlikely to be a high level of awareness of this detection in China.

"I think what we're seeing is, the Chinese authorities are very strict in terms of how they look at all possible sources of how Covid got into the country," he said.

For information, last week Stuff quoted the Global Times as saying that a sample of New Zealand kiwifruit sold in supermarkets in China's Jiangsu Province tested positive for COVID-19.

The Global Times reported the fruit had tested positive on Wednesday and local health authorities were immediately working to identify "close contacts and sub-contacts".

"Control measures have been taken for close contact while nucleic acid samples from 14 staff and environmental samples exposed to this batch of kiwifruit have been taken, the test results are all negative".

Authorities are urging people who have been to supermarkets, or who consumed or handled fruit from stores between September 12 and 23, to adhere to health protocol measures.