On 9 May 2016 Kiwifruit Vine Health (KVH) signed the Operational Agreement (OA) for fruit flies on behalf of the kiwifruit industry—a significant milestone to further improve biosecurity readiness and response activities for fruit flies and the first such agreement under the Government Industry Agreements (GIA) partnership.

GIA partners, The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI), Pipfruit NZ, NZ Citrus Growers and NZ Avocados are also signatories of the OA.

The OA sets out the operational requirements for readiness and response activities for fruit flies and importantly, enables joint decision making and also clarifies cost-sharing arrangements between government and affected industries.

Under the OA, KVH and other parties will agree a work plan to improve readiness and response, including how we can detect fruit flies earlier and also reducing costs without reducing effectiveness.

Cost-sharing for fruit fly readiness and response activities commences when the OA comes into full effect in 2017. Once fully implemented, the Government will pay the first 20% of total costs on behalf of risk exacerbators. The remaining costs will then be shared by government and benefiting industries as follows:

• 70% Govt: 30% Industry for readiness/surveillance (current annual costs are around $1.85m)
• 70% Govt: 30% Industry for level 1 response (i.e. Whangarei response)
• 80% Govt: 20% Industry for level 2 response (i.e. Grey Lynn response)
• 90% Govt: 10% Industry for level 3 response (larger response where alternative control methods may be required.

The industry portion will then be divided among all benefiting industries based on industry value. For a fruit fly incursion, the kiwifruit industry currently represents about 48.5% of the value of all industries potentially affected by this organism, and therefore would pick up 48.5% of the total industry share.

Costs are limited by a fiscal cap which equates to about $3.12m for the collective industry share. The existing kiwifruit biosecurity levy paid by growers is sufficient to cover kiwifruit industry costs under the OA.

Industries that benefit from a response but haven’t signed up to GIA or the OA will still have to pay their share and the government will seek to recover costs from 1 July 2017.