Australian tomato growers who were forced to shut down for a year and destroy thousands of plants due to an exotic disease outbreak have been given the green light to reopen. SA Tomato was one of three glasshouses north of Adelaide swiftly quarantined and closed in August 2024 after Australia's first detection of tomato brown rugose fruit virus. The disease does not pose a food safety safety risk, but does reduce plant yields.
SA Tomato owner Peter Petsios vowed to rebuild his business after an extremely tough 12 months.
"We've experienced a catastrophic experience here — our business has been completely barren for a year," he said. "No income and a lot of expenses just keeping the lights on here, so it's not like we've got money in the bank we can survive off, so we did it very, very hard. We knew something was going to prevail eventually, but I think they could have done it a lot quicker and a lot smarter."
"We were probably the sacrificial lamb here to keep our facilities shut for a year, for the benefit of the community," he said. "We understand to have 300 or 400 growers trading as long as we stay shut, it's probably a good deal if you look at it overall, but in the end we're people here too and we need money as well, so we were pretty much disregarded by the government."
Read more at ABC Australia
