Intercitrus hails European Commission’s approval of cold treatment for citrus

The extraordinary session of the Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed (SCoPAFF) held on 25th May definitively approved the cold treatment for oranges imported from countries suffering from ‘False moth’. 

“What was approved today by the SCoPAFF is something that transcends the Spanish citrus industry, it is a historic step in favour of plant health in European agriculture as a whole,” said the president of Intercitrus, Inmaculada Sanfeliu.

The interprofessional expressed “enormous satisfaction” at the achievement and congratulated the department for its “excellent technical work” carried out for months and for the “intense political efforts” carried out during these last days “to make scientific arguments ” in the fight against this disease.

The decision of the SCoPAFF will enter into force before the end of June and implies a transitory regime for this campaign and a double cold treatment alternative from the following season. In this campaign, the European Commission will demand from countries where Thaumatotibia leukotreta has been declared (South Africa and Zimbabwe) precooling at 5 degrees Celsius at origin and treatment in transit of between -1 and 2 degrees for 25 days. From 2023, there will be a choice of two options: cold treatment between -1 and 0 degrees for 16 days or cold treatment between -1 and 2 degrees for 20 days. In both cases, following the usual ways of doing things in this field, the operators would be required to precool at 0 degrees and 2 degrees, respectively. Among many other technical requirements, this proposal will impose control by means of sensors to produce records for inspection.