Everyone knows that Kiwis constantly try to subvert our Australian way of life. They did it, for example by sending us Jo Bjelke-Petersen back in 1913 and then again with Russell Crowe.
Now they are sneaking Philippine bananas in via Qantas meals. The issue of importing bananas from The Philippines has been simmering for years. Back in September 2006 Cyclone Larry had flattened 85% of Australia’s banana plantations.
Back then it seemed certain that Biosecurity Australia who trade under the banner of “Biosecurity Australia, aiding market access” would eventually decide to let Filipino bananas in, even if it was over Bill Heffernan’s dead body.
My default position on this matter is that food is different from ordinary tradeable goods, that we like to trust the sources of our food supply so there are reasons for buying food locally other than ‘food miles’. Bananas from North Queensland possibly cost more in terms of the CO2 footprint than bananas put in a boat in a foreign country, but NQ is within the same political jurisdiction and we have a better chance of maintaining quality over time.
Food security is also going to be an increasing issue as climate change progresses. Gwynne Dyer claims that:
the first and most important impact on human civilisation will be an acute and permanent crisis of food supply.
I think we should take care before we put under threat established major food industries anywhere. The banana is a major commodity grown in at least 107 countries, and from memory, I think it rates about 4 or 5 in terms of the top food crops in the world.
I understand that there are at least 5 diseases that would threaten the Australian industry with this decision. With the banana there is a lack of genetic diversity which threatens some of the popular varieties like Cavendish. Maintaing a disease-free industry may be more important than just the local concerns. Biosecurity Australia’s attitude to risk is derisory, regarding the a 30% risk of disease outbreak in any one year as acceptable.
Having said all that I don’t know exactly what was decided on bananas. This was NSW’s reaction. This is what Barnaby’s blog had to say.
This is what Biosecurity Australia had to say on March 4.
I gather individual cases will now be considered on their merits. Where exactly this leaves the matter in practical terms I’m not sure. I also gather that politicians can’t do anything about it at this stage other than revisit the law, which from my earlier post there would be a good case for them so to do. This from my previous post on the matter of pork:
The Federal Government, bless their free-trading little hearts, appealed to the Full Bench who granted the appeal. They decided that while the business of Biosecurity Australia was to determine policy there was no obligation on them to produce ‘good’ policy. Any old policy would do.
But I’m betting they lack both the vision and the bottle. The Americans under the US FTA would not be pleased if they did.
My potted version: Neoliberal polities and leaving everything up to Teh Market, plus the related problem of previous government dismantling our biosecurity arrangements via unequal trade agreements, is rendering us more and more vulnerable to pests and diseases.
Biosecurity Australia’s attitude to risk is derisory, regarding the a 30% risk of disease outbreak in any one year as acceptable.
Hi Brian, I was wondering where Biosecurity Australia stated this (either directly or implied)?
Australia’s bio-secuirty measures proved to be totally inadequate during the 2007 horse flu epidemic, which threatened a hugely valuable industry.
Ken, I said that in September 2006 and about then we had Stern, the Gore fillum, the Monbiot book, then the IPCC report, Garnaut etc. I haven’t kept up to date on trade matters, so it’s lost in the mists of time and memory for the moment. I’ll have a bit of a scout tonight if no-one else comes up with anything, but I may have got it from the Background Briefing program linked in the earlier post.
Disease isn’t as big a problem as insect pests on bananas, from what I remember of undergrad. We’re one of very few nations who’ve so far managed to keep our domestic crop free of a several problem species, and imports practically guarantee an end to that.
Our quarantine net isn’t quite as secure as I’d thought on that front either – from what I’ve heard, there are something like 4 people in the country doing insect pest ID, and very few more people with similar expertise. Its not one of those skills you can learn in a classroom one semester.
I’d be a lot more enthusiastic about our fruit and veg biosecurity measures if so much of our locally produced fruit and veg wasn’t such utter rubbish.
To take a few random examples, why can I not rely on apples being crisp and sweet as is possible in NZ and Europe? Or oranges not being made of leather and pips? To be fair, our bananas seem to be a bit better, but don’t even get me started on localy grown potatoes.
I tend to be suspicious that the prevention of imports may have less to do with protection from disease than with maintaining the ignorance of the market.
Fine @ #3, in your opinion to what extent can the lack of due diligence which led to the horse flu epidemic be put down to pressure from the studs wanting to get their stallions out of quarantine and into the breeding barns ASAP? Am I being unfair in raising this possibility?
With the banana there is a lack of genetic diversity which threatens some of the popular varieties like Cavendish.
If this is the case it seems that bananas are not a very secure food source to rely in times of crisis, and that we might benefit by transferring some of those plantations to safer crops?
My potted version: Neoliberal polities and leaving everything up to Teh Market, plus the related problem of previous government dismantling our biosecurity arrangements via unequal trade agreements, is rendering us more and more vulnerable to pests and diseases.
Do we have any evidence that pests and disease have risen?
Australia’s bio-secuirty measures proved to be totally inadequate during the 2007 horse flu epidemic, which threatened a hugely valuable industry.
Was the outbreak introduced?
I’m not against protecting markets to ensure security, or to protect jobs in transition, but the case for bananas doesn’t seem to tick enough boxes.
If we take this stand on bananas, how do we answer the same argument from sugar cane farmers in the US?
we like to trust the sources of our food supply so there are reasons for buying food locally
But this is about forcing others to make the same choice here as you. As it happens I should have thought that the far greater variety and better quality of imported bananas adds to, rather than lowers, confidence in this product anyway.
Further, using concerns about genetic diversity as an argument for banning overseas bananas is daft because Australian bananas, in particular, have an extremely limited genetic base.
And for organic food enthusiasts Australian bananas have to be some of the worst in the world because the lack of competition allows them to be grown in less than perfect natural conditions. So they require lots of inorganic fertilisers, lots of insecticides and lots of runoff of topsoil from the slopes. It’s land that would be put to better use if not for the distortions created by the import ban.
Just why are people so keen to make Australians pay more for crap products?
Bananas have gone the way of tomatoes. They are usually hard, woody, tasteless things. The only ones that are edible are Lady Fingers. Apples are mushy things the size of watermelons and most other stuff is restricted to one generic variety. Farmer’s Markets are the equivalant of contracting Telstra to supply all your phone, net and mobile needs – only affordable if you are a middle class professional in a tenured job.
bananas are not a very secure food source to rely in times of crisis, and that we might benefit by transferring some of those plantations to safer crops
safer = lower yield, however, so there would be losses involved. That’s what staple crops mean – you don’t make 10% of the employees redundant, you starve 10% of the population to death. Well, if population/food was linear you would, but the result is likely to be interesting anyway.
It’s like stupid pacific island nations that sell off their fisheries when fish is a staple. What do they think will happen once the buyer mines out all the fish?
Paul @ 7, as far as I’ve heard that’s what it was mainly about. It seems that workers in the quarantine stations broke the rules all the time e.g’ not washing dirt of their boots when they were leaving. I’ve also heard that the large Hunter Valley studs were breaking the rules re movement of horses after the fact, with impunity.
That’s what staple crops mean…
Are bananas such a staple? When 85% of the market was wiped out and prices increased dramatically, this didn’t see a significant impact on public health as we might expect for a staple food item.
“And for organic food enthusiasts Australian bananas have to be some of the worst in the world because the lack of competition allows them to be grown in less than perfect natural conditions. So they require lots of inorganic fertilisers, lots of insecticides and lots of runoff of topsoil from the slopes. It’s land that would be put to better use if not for the distortions created by the import ban.”
So, what crops do we grow in Australia that are perfectly suited to our nourishing environment? If we stop growing all those, to what better use will all the land be put? A
lot of our food could be grown organically but it would cost a lot, lot more, which we could pay, but no, we think cheapest is best.
And what happens if we were to grow food just where it’s perfectly suited to it? Well, first we burn off Sumatra’s forest and drain it’s peat swamps and cover it with palm oil plantations, because Sumatra is perfectly suited to plam oil plantations. Then we can burn off Amazonia and turn it into pasture for raising beef …. the Philippines can be cleared for banana production. DD , have you never heard of monocultures, of the problems of transporting all this stuff around the world?
Fresh, tasty organic bananas – $1.50/kg @ Queen Victoria Market. What was that you were saying, FXH?
I’m a little confused by this – I grew up on a banana farm, and whilst it wasn’t the biggest operation, unless the farming has done a 180′, this doesn’t really ring true to me.
I’m not saying our farm is representative of all farms, but certainly it wasn’t an outlier, and we didn’t use any insecticides at all, and I’m pretty sure the only, very sporadic, fertilising was trace elements.
Run-off wasn’t an issue on our farm, either. In fact, the bananas were growing on recliamed pasture, so erosion was actually less.
As I say, not saying this is true for all bananas, and I’m not saying banana farming is some kind of environmental utopia, but I would be interested to see where your knowledge comes from here cause +10 years of my experience says this isn’t entirely true.
Alister,
Please do us a favour and find out how much similar bananas cost at your local Coles or Woolworths. The answer might be interesting to those who think ‘cheaper’ imports would be such a boon to the poor.
The New Economics Foundation compared a shopping basket of fruit and vegetables from a local supermarket with the same from the QueensMarket in East London and found that the produce from the markets could be had at nearly half the price of the supermarket. That’s partly because the market has a big end-of-day sellout where the remaining stuff is sold very cheaply – which is particularly useful for poor people.
I suspect that the retail cost of food doesn’t bear much relationship to the cost of production, and so people concerned with cost might look in the wholesale and retail areas before hoping cheap imports will be of much use. Besides. I think in Australia we throw out something like a quarter to a third of the food we buy – we need to investigate why. I suspect part of the reason has been provided by FXH – fresh food sold in supermarkets is generally awful.
I have an anecdote: a friend of mine was hosting some colleagues from a Vietnamese sister institution. The vistors were put up for a couple of weeks in a self-service unit near the institution they were visiting. After they had gone home my friend contacted a friend in Vietnam to find out what they had said about their stay here. It was wonderful, interesting, everyone was so kind – but they nearly starved. They went to the local shopping centre and supermarket, but the food looked so old they couldn’t bear to buy/eat it.
In my experience, in WA at least, although the price varies by source, the quality is uniformly dreadful whether it comes from the market or from Coles.
Fine @ 12, I can confirm that a large Hunter Valley stud were caught moving stallions in the dead of night in the midsts of the EI panic, but as far as I know were neither fined nor necessarily reprimanded. When you have that much money and you’re a sheik your booty baby, you don’t really need to be too fussed about Australia’s puny laws or regulations.
However, the word that really stands out for me in this post is QANTAS, who now that they have had their illegal transport cartel exposed and dismantled are (surprise suprise), not making as bigger profits as once they were and have decided to avenge themselves by sacking more staff and exposing us all to the little known, but greatly dreaded Phillipine banana blight bunchee rot disease.
Bastards.
Shoot ‘em out of the sky I say.
Nothing like personal experience to get you excited about this subject. For me it was watching a beautiful tub of NZ honey dumped into an Australian Customs bin upon my ‘anything to declare’ innocence on arrival. The continued banning of Kiwi apples serves to remind me of the idiot politics and vested interests mixed into this ‘debate’.
And so to kiwi/filipino bananas sneaking aboard Qantas. I wonder what they would have said about the flying miles potential of the Equadorean bananas that I grew up with across the ditch.
Pablo @20, the continued banning of Kiwi apples and pears is due to the infestation of fire blight in their orchards. If this gets into Australian orchards, it will mean the wholesale destruction of our apple and pear industry. Not really worth the risk, I would have thought.
WA is the only place in the world where there is no codling moth or apple scab, which is why it won’t import fruit from anywhere including other states in Australia.
Philipines bananas are infested with mealy bugs. Do we want these pests here?
And I suppose it’s OK to risk importing pork from countries which have the deadly post-weaning multi-systemic wasting syndrome, for which there is no preventative vaccine or cure? There are only three countries which are free of this disease which killed 8 million pigs in just a few years after its introduction to Europe, and Australia is one of them.
My final words on this subject are CANE TOADS.
Qantas source their food locally, so I wouldn’t seriously argue that they were evil for getting some foreign bananas in NZ. There might be issues as to how the unused ones are disposed of, however.
dd you and I are never going to agree on trade. I don’t have certain knowledge here, it goes back to endless arguments on the radio years ago. But I recall concern about the unsustainability of banana farming practices in The Philippines by American corporations who strip a hillside, take no steps to prevent erosion, flog it to death, and then move on to another hillside.
I’d be surprised if the Innisfail farmers were farming unsustainably. I seems like pretty good banana country to me.
I wasn’t claiming anything about the genetic diversity of Australian bananas. Just that if you have a disease free environment (of the really nasty banana diseases) it might be a useful resource in the future.
The only experience I had of eating bananas in the southern states was 40 years ago. I found them almost inedible. Picked green and served too green by food preparers.
pablo, fire blight is a serious issue for our apple and pear industry.
Ken Miles @ 2, the info was, as I suspected from Peter Martin’s Background Briefing report on 23 April 2006. They were talking about the risk of importing Post Weaning Multisystemic Wasting Syndrome, or PMWS in pig meat.
They then went on to relate how the High Court found that Federal Court Justice, Murray Wilcox who found against Biosecurity Australia on that basis, likening the first year of importing rabbits as all good news, had erred. He was not entitled to have a view on the quality of Biosecurity Australia’s work. An application to appeal was disallowed.
jane @ 21, that’s good information. I understand from the Background Briefing program I linked to that there are five diseases we are concerned with on Filipino bananas.
Worse than the cane toad would be fire ants. I think in the US the line approximates where there is snow in the winter.
We had an outbreak in Queensland in 2001. They reckon they’ve got it licked, which was thought undoable, but I believe the cost was about $30 million.
There are plenty others, including some other nasty ants that are not being chased.
Oh for heaven’s sake Jane can we please have a bit of basic logic in amongst the apocalyptic visions?
So the reason to keep out New Zealand apples and pears is because of fireblight in that country which would lead to the destruction of the Australian apple and pear industry? As proved I suppose by the way its presence in New Zealand has already destroyed its own apple and pear industry so it has none to export?
Oh, wait.
Restriction on import of Kiwi apples and pears has got nothing to do with fireblight. Independent (Commonwealth government) scientific assessments have consistently recommended removal of the restrictions. It has everything to do with straight protectionism for political purposes – defending an inefficient Australian industry growing some pretty mediocre produce. As usual it is the consumer who suffers.
I do however get a certain wry amusement from some of the comments in this thread, in the fact that the agricultural protectionism represented by many of the workings of the Australian quarantine system – certainly not restricted to New Zealand apples and Philippines bananas – are intended mainly to benefit the constituency of the local Agrarian Socialist Party. Not exactly a constituency which most commenters on this blog would rush to support in quite this way very often.
Wozza, last time I looked the NZ per capita GDP was about 75% of Australia’s. Costs on NZ farms are bound to be lower. But should we wipe out our Australian industries and import everything from NZ and elsewhere, including places that heavily subsidise their farmers?
What Dyer said about a permanent food crisis as the main impact of climate change needs to be taken seriously. He says you won’t be able to buy it at any price on Teh Market.
Australia is one of the few places in the world that isn’t hopelessly cacked up with agricultural pests and diseases. Other countries default position is, why should we be any different? We are swimming against the current by insisting on a scientific approach. If you read the Background Briefing link and copious comment before we signed the US FTA, there is reasonable suspicion that that scientific approach is being compromised by Biosecurity Australia which appears to have a pro-trade bias.
Those who claim a mortgage on logic usually have a fair component of emotion in their stance, which is very evident in your comment.
So we should be capable of growing something better than the inedible crap that we do, yes?
Brian can I remind you that we have a free trade agreement with NZ and that in support of Wozza, the scientific basis for excluding kiwi apples/pears has been so weak that the case is now before the World Trade Organisation’s legal people for a judicial ruling. These things take time and NZ has been very patient, but I’d put money on a win for the imports eventually, no recourse to emotion needed, just an appreciation of the science. And I still can’t work out how a tub of processed honey destined solely for eating is a disease threat to local honey makers.
OK Brian, sorry, I could have phrased it less aggressively. Please accept the Ruddian RAF apology – if I have offended anyone, etc.
However, I reiterate that the argument that fireblight will wipe out the Australian industry is clearly illogical. So is your reference to NZ GDP and cost levels. Are you suggesting that Australia should only trade with those who have a higher cost structure than Australia? Who would presumably apply the same argument and refuse imports from Australia anyway. We could all take in each other’s laundry then perhaps? The whole point of trade is about comparative advantage.
In any case, the WTO’s agreements on sanitary and phytosanitary measures, to which Australia is legally bound, allow quarantine/bio-security restrictions to be applied only for strictly scientific reasons. Economic reasons don’t cut it. And as Pablo points out, Australia has effectively lost the scientific argument, at least on NZ apples, already, and is just dragging out the WTO legal process for as long as it can.
I am unaware of the full potential consequences of fireblight infestation.
However, for those who advocate free trade in all agricultural products because free trade is TEH AWSUM, I can tell you that an entire citrus industry in my region was wiped from existence by an exotic plant disease. No one knows for certain the source of the infection but since the disease citrus canker does not occur naturally in Australia, it was obviously imported in infected material of some kind. A billionare plantation owner was implicated in smuggling in budding material to save money but there was insufficient evidence to convict him.
Citrus canker does not usually kill the tree but it renders the fruit unmarketable. It is highly contagious. The only method of controlling a serious outbreak is to destroy all affected plants as well as all in the near vicinity.
An entire local industry was reduced to ashes, farms and jobs destroyed. Goes to show what would likely happen if all protective measures were simply removed for the sake of free trade.
Quite coincidentally, last night there was a segment on Catalyst about GM bananas, making them resistant to fusarium, which wiped out the burgeoning NT banana industry.
95% of world bananas are Cavendish, check this out.
Interestingly, I recall from Anthropology 101 that south american tribes, which now rely almost exclusively on plantains for their staple foods, have long and involved creation myths for a food that only turned up 200 years ago.
“The whole point of trade is about comparative advantage.”
No, the whole point of trade, as with other business, is to make money and you don’t need comparative advantage to do it. (See U.S. farm subsidies etc etc ….)
“So we should be capable of growing something better than the inedible crap that we do, yes?”
Yes. But inedible crap is what Australians vote for with their purchasing decisions.
Wozza, not a problem. I usually take any opportunity to stress the inevitable emotional component of ‘rational’ decisions. I read some articles in either the New Scientist or The Scientific American which demonstrated that everything we do has an emotional base. It’s inevitable and unavoidable unless there is a physical interruption with whatever part of the brain is being used and the emotional centre.
As I’ve said, I don’t keep up with trade matters these days, but I heard quite a bit over the years about fire blight on ABC radio over the years. The weakness of the science has never seemed self-evident to me. Quite the contrary. But you would have to be a scientist and look at the evidence closely to have an opinion that mattered.
The problem here is that WTO disputes are usually resolved by panels of three trade lawyers, one appointed by each party and one ‘independent’. The whole process has a pro-trade bias.
So if you want to preserve an industry for cultural, heritage or even environmental reasons, the odds are against you. The one reason that is allowed is the scientific phytosanitary one, and here the default attitude in other countries (and pro free-traders here) is that Australia misuses these provisions to set up bogus trade barriers. If you ask our farmers they will tell you that Biosecurity Australia is a joke and have never heard of the precautionary principle.
Even now I understand that the rules do allow a country to protect the viability of a domestic industry. How else could the Americans and the Europeans get away with what they do?
In the post I was arguing that climate change is a new circumstance and that food security was a factor we should take into account.
In my earlier post I noted that there had already been a report some years ago that found it would be to our national benefit if we paid all the banana farmers to sit on the beach and imported all our bananas. It seemed to me that Howard encouraging the Innisfail farmers that they had a future after Cyclone Larry was a cruel hoax and Heffernan was delusional if he thought as a politician he could do anything about it.
On trade generally I would argue that the notion that trade is the supreme good above all others that of itself lifts countless millions out of poverty around the world if we just let it rip is false. But that argument was lost in this country when Latham supported the US FTA, so I’m not keen to waste key strokes on it.
pablo, I have no idea why your honey had to go. I’d guess that there was a suspicion that it was contaminated with one of potentially many diseases. A bee might fly in the widow and snatch a feed off your plate, or your sandwich, and then go and infect the whole country. You can never be too careful
You’ve probably heard by now that Qantas has told its NZ news supplier to take bananas off the menu.
Starting with TIB @ 6 and various gripes down the thread, my wife reckons you need to go to a specialist fruit and veg shop where the Italians, Greeks and Vietnamese know where to find good stuff. Yes, you pay a bit more and a lot of lines are expensive right now. So you eat the in season stuff that’s cheaper.
From wilful’s link @ 31, disease is a problem threatening the viability of bananas. Why anyone would think it’s OK to jeopardize our bananas under those circumstances is beyond me.
Of interest, chocolate may be in short supply for similar reasons. There is an article in the current New Scientist saying the Ivory Coast crop will be down by 30% because of cacao swollen root virus. Brazil is infected with a fungus called witches’ broom.
All what I know is that NZ apples taste infinitely better than Australian apples. And the banana’s are frequently better as well.
I can’t comment on that, Ken, but when we toured the South Island in 1981 we found their ice-cream absolutely the best.
I’m not against trade or against free trade agreements. The one we have with New Zealand is one of the more comprehensive and sensible ones in the world. But pests and disease have to be controlled within that. Southern states have never liked our fruit flies that add value to a meal of fruit. The citrus scare that Boy from Flynn mentions @ 30 was real and serious. It is my impression that it didn’t wipe out the industry, although large plantations of fruit trees had to be bulldozed and burnt. For a time no citrus from Queensland could be shipped south of the border.
In SEQ control of the fire ant has meant restrictions on certain things being transported from one suburb to another.
I’m arguing for a rationality in considering these matters that takes into account issues other than trade/competition as well.
A bit more tonight if I have the strength.
I think that Australia should tighten its control over introduced plants. Our rivers are choking with weed because some idiot tipped fish tank introduced weed into a stream somewhere. There are nasty little weeds running amock in many places. Not to mention those damned toads. Kiwis are desperate for Australia to acquire certain apple diseases so they can export their apples here. We do not need more. Farming is tough enough in Australia without introducing plants, diseases, and insect battles to contend with as well.
Wozza,
I have no problem with apple imports from NZ, in the form of juice or cider, and they will make far more turning the pulp into ethanol. Kiwis are just not up with the times. If apples do start coming in with their skins on, I wonder how long it will be before we have giant wetas scurrying around, and new strains of sand fly.
And there is apple sauce, tomatoe sauce (often made with apples), tinned apples and pears, and Sarah Lee apple pies. All processed with clean hydro electricity. There is more than enough Kiwi apple arriving in Australia. Now they want to send the whole apples here? Unprocessed? That is just plain lazy.
My wife has just come back from shopping and she reckons all you people complaining about poor food need to learn how to shop. I’m not about to disagree with her!
Tried that. It’s better, but there’s still a good fifty-fifty chance that you’ll get rubbish (here in WA at least).
I can’t comment on that, Ken, but when we toured the South Island in 1981 we found their ice-cream absolutely the best.
Whenever I return to NZ, I make it a policy to eat as many apples as possible.
Generally, Australian’s are spoiled for choice wrt fruit (probably a legacy of the size and different climatic regions), but Aussie apples range from poor to average in quality.
Two NZ stables which unfortunately haven’t entered the Australian diet in a big way (and are hence really hard to find) are Feijoa and yams.
TIB, I eat 1 or 2 bananas a day and in all honesty have to say that what I’m eating is not as good as what I remember. I think, though, that this is because my wife doesn’t get up with the birds on Saturday mornings anymore and buy at the farmers’ market.
It’s likely though that what the farmer brought to us was a fraction of his output, probably with superficial marks on the fruit that made them unsuitable for sale through the normal channels. But the ones he brought to the farmers’ market were probably ripened on the ‘tree’ (it’s really a herb) more.
Ken the innovativeness of the Kiwis is to be admired. They made the
Chinese gooseberryKiwi fruit a household item. I heard it suggested that we should do the same with the custard apple, basically good tucker, but it never happened.I do understand, however, that in North Queensland and probably the NT there is a variety of exotica grown for niche markets in the restaurant trade and wealthy households in Asia. We don’t see them here, though. The CO2 implications of this trade probably don’t bear thinking about.
RE: Brian
Apr 17th, 2009 at 12:05 am
“Worse than the cane toad would be fire ants. We had an outbreak in Queensland in 2001. They reckon they’ve got it licked, which was thought undoable, but I believe the cost was about $30 million.”
Indeed, and not quite . . . The Qld infestation at one point covered around 90,000 hectares (minimum) of SE Qld and the remaining colonies are still being tackled (nationally-funded) as the most cost-effective response possible to these tramp ant nightmares and their known impacts. Direct cost to date is in excess of $A200m, and the estimated (in 2001) economic impact alone more than $A6bn over 30 years.
No part of Texas has been infested for any more than 50 years and yet that one state (of the 13 infested) now spends more than US$1bn per annum on corporate and individual chemical controls. Add that people can and do die from shock reactions to RIFA stings, and that entire ecologies can be and are destroyed by these tiny ants and the cost of greatly-increased prophylactic surveillance and boosting community awareness seems pretty trivial to me . . .
Thanks for the information, mm.
My memory is that the initial estimate was $30m. I’m not surprised if it cost more. I believe other states and the Commonwealth contributed because they would have shown up in Melbourne eventually. Apart from other considerations I believe they would have wiped out native ants and a whole layer of small animals. They are said to attack in swarms like bees and would go for the eyes and orifices of small animals.