More on Regulatory Issues

More on Regulatory Issues. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Yesterday, Mike Willett with the Northwest Hort Council discussed some regulatory problems surrounding morpholine used in waxing apples. He says a big problem is in testing standardization in Europe.

WILLETT: In fact just earlier this year we had 10 containers of apples that were rejected in Europe for the presence of morpholine. The odd thing was when they send them to another lab in Europe, they didn’t detect any morpholine levels. But the problem is there is no standard methodology in the labs in Europe that are using the methodology that they’ve developed, are not willing to share it with anybody else.

He says the NW Hort Council has been working on this issue.

WILLETT: The NW Hort Council has been working with the USDA IR4 laboratory at Davis whose got a history of doing method development and we’re trying to work with them to help develop a methodology that was actually proposed by the European Reference Lab in Stuttgart. We’re working through the process trying to figure out if we get this methodology validated by a third part, i.e. UC Davis IR4 lab, can we then publish this methodology in a peer review system and then sort of use that as leverage to say ok, here is the standard system

Of course there are groups that for a substantial fee would assist in this venture but Willet says that really is not where they want to go. Tomorrow Willet will look at another regulatory issue, ethoxyquin.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.