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Int'l Freighter Awaits New Zealand Judgement on Controversial Palm Feed
Int'l Freighter Awaits New Zealand Judgement on Controversial Palm Feed
04/10/2016 (Xinhua) - Environment campaigners and opposition lawmakers stepped up calls Monday for New Zealand to cease feeding a controversial imported palm by-product to cattle.
The calls mounted as a ship carrying a reported 23,000 tonnes of palm kernel expeller (PKE) waited to hear whether it would be granted access to the eastern North Island port of Tauranga.
The MV Molat has been anchored off Tauranga since Sept. 6, when it was blocked from docking because of problems with paperwork regarding its cargo, which is believed to have come from Malaysia or Indonesia.
Radio New Zealand reported Monday that the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) would not identify the importer, who would have to prove the cargo posed no biosecurity risk before it could be offloaded.
MPI border clearance services director Steve Gilbert told Radio New Zealand that the ship had come from a facility that had not been approved by the Malaysian government, which was requirement to bring palm kernel into New Zealand.
Gilbert said palm kernel was a significant risk of carrying a range of plant and animal diseases if left untreated.
The main opposition Labour Party and the opposition Green Party have called for the vessel to be turned back.
"MPI needs to come clean on who the importers of the PKE shipment are and what negotiations they've had, so it can be determined whether it came from an unsustainable source, as appears likely," Green Party biosecurity spokesperson Steffan Browning said in a statement.
"The biosecurity risks alone should be a good enough reason to turn the ship around. It's also being reported that the shipment was exported from ports in Northern Sumatra, which have previously been linked with exports of unsustainable PKE."
New Zealand imported a record 1.95 million tonnes of PKE in the year to June 2015.
"Thousands of hectares of Indonesian rainforest are going up in smoke to make way for palm oil and pulp plantations, which are used to grow PKE, destroying the habitat of iconic species such as the orangutan," said Browning.
"Burning the forest and peat lands is also contributing to runaway climate change."
PKE is a by-product of the palm oil industry and is used as a supplementary animal feed, mostly by the dairy industry.
One of the largest importers, dairy giant Fonterra, which sells one third of the palm oil kernel expeller in New Zealand had confirmed to Radio New Zealand that the shipment was not theirs.
In August, state-owned farming company Landcorp said it would cease feeding PKE to its cattle and replace it with locally-sourced feeds by June next year.
"We need to anticipate shifting consumer expectations on how their food is produced and change how we farm accordingly," Landcorp chief executive Steven Carden said in a statement at the time.
The Greenpeace environment campaign group has said New Zealand is the largest importer of PKE, using about a quarter of the world's supply each year.
The calls mounted as a ship carrying a reported 23,000 tonnes of palm kernel expeller (PKE) waited to hear whether it would be granted access to the eastern North Island port of Tauranga.
The MV Molat has been anchored off Tauranga since Sept. 6, when it was blocked from docking because of problems with paperwork regarding its cargo, which is believed to have come from Malaysia or Indonesia.
Radio New Zealand reported Monday that the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) would not identify the importer, who would have to prove the cargo posed no biosecurity risk before it could be offloaded.
MPI border clearance services director Steve Gilbert told Radio New Zealand that the ship had come from a facility that had not been approved by the Malaysian government, which was requirement to bring palm kernel into New Zealand.
Gilbert said palm kernel was a significant risk of carrying a range of plant and animal diseases if left untreated.
The main opposition Labour Party and the opposition Green Party have called for the vessel to be turned back.
"MPI needs to come clean on who the importers of the PKE shipment are and what negotiations they've had, so it can be determined whether it came from an unsustainable source, as appears likely," Green Party biosecurity spokesperson Steffan Browning said in a statement.
"The biosecurity risks alone should be a good enough reason to turn the ship around. It's also being reported that the shipment was exported from ports in Northern Sumatra, which have previously been linked with exports of unsustainable PKE."
New Zealand imported a record 1.95 million tonnes of PKE in the year to June 2015.
"Thousands of hectares of Indonesian rainforest are going up in smoke to make way for palm oil and pulp plantations, which are used to grow PKE, destroying the habitat of iconic species such as the orangutan," said Browning.
"Burning the forest and peat lands is also contributing to runaway climate change."
PKE is a by-product of the palm oil industry and is used as a supplementary animal feed, mostly by the dairy industry.
One of the largest importers, dairy giant Fonterra, which sells one third of the palm oil kernel expeller in New Zealand had confirmed to Radio New Zealand that the shipment was not theirs.
In August, state-owned farming company Landcorp said it would cease feeding PKE to its cattle and replace it with locally-sourced feeds by June next year.
"We need to anticipate shifting consumer expectations on how their food is produced and change how we farm accordingly," Landcorp chief executive Steven Carden said in a statement at the time.
The Greenpeace environment campaign group has said New Zealand is the largest importer of PKE, using about a quarter of the world's supply each year.