Since October 28, the Taiwanese market has officially opened its doors to Italian apples for the 2020/21 season.
The protocol signed last year with the Taipei authorities stipulated that the Thai phytosanitary inspectors will be visiting Italy for the first two trading seasons to carry out audits and give official authorization for the first consignments. Therefore, after the on-site visit to Italy in November 2019, a new audit was scheduled for autumn 2020.
Due to the outbreak of Covid-19 and its control measures, the Thai inspectors could not travel to Italy. At this point, Mipaaf proposed, in consultation with the operators, to carry out the audit remotely. The Taiwanese authorities authorized the Italian inspectors to carry out the inspections, providing the checklist and instructions to carry out the inspections.
Thus, the minutes of the audits carried out for them by the Italian regional and provincial phytosanitary authorities were sent to the Taiwanese authorities. A few weeks after sending the documentation, the permit to proceed with the export arrived on time.
"Being able to carry out the inspection remotely has enabled us to guarantee our members the ability to export. We hope that this first virtual control experiment can also be applied to other countries for other products," said Simona Rubbi of CSO Italy.
"The ability to carry out audits in this way demonstrates Taiwan's trust in our control systems, which we are very pleased about," said Giulia Montanaro of Assomela. "We hope that this direction, forced by Covid-19, can also be followed when we go back to normal, given the results achieved".