The Kiwifruit industry is currently very busy spraying its Gold crops with KeyStrepto an antibacterial spray containing Streptomycin used to slow the onset of a bacterial infection called PSa.
The Government has set up a department in the Bay Of Plenty called Kiwifruit Vine Health (KVH) to manage PSa and any publicity surrounding it.
It was 2004 when Europe banned Streptomycin from agricultural sprays, and decades before that from agricultural growth enhancers .
The key objective of these bans is to reduce pools of resistance genes resulting in antibiotic resistant bacteria.
Aside from the dangers to human antibiotics, Avocado orchardists and Bee keepers in the Bay are up in arms because the merest hint of Streptomycin in or on their produce will get it banned from Europe and the USA – for good reason.
What makes KVH think it knows better about the use of antibiotics in agriculture than science and the rest or the world?
For the sake of humanity this outdated and ignorant practice needs to stop immediately and one of the viable alternative sprays used.

Scott Robertson, Katikati.