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Bees, bureaucracy and biosecurity – Australia's food future on a knife's edge*

Some 65 percent of Australia's food supply relies on managed European honeybees for their pollination: fruit, vegetable, nuts and seeds. Even beef and dairy production rely on lucerne and clover pollinated by honey bees.

Right now a silent crisis, being fumbled by bureaucracy, is putting those bees and Australia's future food supply seriously under threat - and it is going unnoticed. Ask most people what would happen if our honey bees blinked out and they'd shrug and naively suggest that we would have to import honey ... WRONG!

No bees mean saying goodbye to two thirds of Australia's food production.

There is a massive global decline in bee numbers from the bee-killing Varroa mite. Hive bee numbers have halved in the United States and large losses have been felt across Europe.
As the last frontier without Varroa, Australia faces its own related onslaught of challenges, which if not urgently arrested have the potential to wipe out honeybee populations in Australia within
10 - 20 years.

An unwanted intruder, the Asian bee (Apis cerana - Java strain), which arrived in 2007 and is currently confined to around Cairns, is still classified as an "incursion" by most beekeepers, yet government now refer to it as "endemic". The Asian bee is more than an incursion - it is the natural host of the Varroa mite and the CSIRO has said it will spread across Australia.

In its own right, the Asian bee does not produce commercial quantities of honey, but competes with European honeybees for nectar, robs their hives, swarms up to eight times more readily than them and cannot be commercialised or hived to be managed for pollination. Combine the previous breach of our biosecurity by the virulent small hive beetle that can destroy entire hives and the "green" light for entry of Varroa with the Asian bee - and Australia is faced with its most menacing threat to food security in history.

On 31 January this year the Australian government made a shock announcement that it would cease eradication efforts and declare the Asian bee endemic. This decision if left unchallenged will allow the Asian bee to spread like a cane toad with wings to all areas where European honeybees exist.

The Australian Association of Food Professionals (AAFP) will present Bees, bureaucracy and biosecurity - Australia's food future on a knife's edge, at a forum at the Australian Museum on Sunday 23 October (11am - 1pm). This "Q&A" style event will see an expert panel highlight and discuss the problems being faced. What are the issues, what is being done, what isn't being done ... where, why and who? In a separate element for the day (not part of the cost) Restaurant Associates' Australian Museum Café will develop a special menu reflecting the issues.

BOOKING DETAILS

When: Sunday 23 October

Time and format: 11am to 1pm including Q&A
Cost: $25

Venue: Australian Museum 6 College St, Sydney (Theatre)

Bookings (close 20 October)

Email: secretariat@foodprofessionals.org.au; Phone: 0448 488 080