South Australian parents and caregivers sending their children back to school have been told to replace fruits with other healthy snacks in lunch boxes.
As students begin to return to classrooms on Wednesday, families living in fruit fly outbreak zones have been urged not to move fruit around regardless if it was homegrown or purchased from a store.
The fruit fly quarantine area spans across metropolitan Adelaide, covering 297 suburbs, as well as in the Riverland and Renmark West.
Primary Industries Minister David Basham said the message was simple — if you live in a fruit fly zone, don’t move fruit around.
“The big concern is that we‘ve seen a recent outbreak in Black Forest, south of Adelaide’s CBD, and that is not connected directly to any other outbreaks which means it’s been moved by someone moving fruit,” he told ABC Radio.
“We need to make sure that stops. That’s the challenge and we need to make people understand they can’t move that fruit around because it does lead to new outbreaks.”
He said the exercise would last for the next 12 weeks, which is how long the eradication period lasts.
“If we can do that (have no flies for 12 weeks), we’ll start to see these areas coming out (of outbreak zones),” Mr Basham said.
Mr Basham said the Primary Industries and Regions SA (PIRSA) website experienced a “glitch” that led users to a dead link.
He said the website could have gone down sometime on Monday or Tuesday but could not say exactly how long it was out.
He confirmed it had been fixed early on Wednesday morning.
Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas said the minister “missed the mark entirely” because checking the PIRSA website wasn’t part of most parents’ morning routines when they’re getting their children ready for school.
“I was doing the lunch boxes this morning and I had no idea what was going on,” he said.
“Most South Australians are finding out that fruit is banned from lunch boxes from reading the morning paper and that’s if they read the paper.
“There has been no information go out and people have to find out on the morning of (school returning).”
But Mr Basham said information had been provided over the past week.
Parents and caregivers have been asked to substitute fresh fruits for non-fruit fly host produce like snow peas, sugar snap peas, carrots, celery, cucumbers, potatoes, pumpkins and leafy vegetables such as lettuce and baby spinach as well as pineapple and melons.
They can also pack cooked or processed fruit, purees, canned or frozen fruits.
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