Huw Irranca-Davies – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Huw Irranca-Davies on 2014-06-17.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether any phyto-sanitary and plant-disease expertise from the UK has been involved in helping to address the shortcomings identified by the EU Commissioner necessitating the recent ban on importation of mangoes from India.

Dan Rogerson

Defra’s Food and Environment Research Agency (Fera) has offered to deliver a technical training programme for Indian Plant Health Inspectors to help address some of the issues raised in the previous European Commission’s Food and Veterinary Office (FVO) audits of the Indian plant health export certification systems. A Plant Health and Seeds Inspector from Fera will be also be assisting the FVO when it undertakes its audit visit to India in September.