Juan Carolus Brown Bauzá Fedefruta

Fedefruta president Juan Carolus Brown

Chilean producer association Fedefruta is proposing a new law to guarantee the free transit of perishable goods during periods of industrial action in a bid to avoid a repeat of the severe disruption to fruit exports caused by port strikes in the last two years.

Presenting the proposal to the Agriculture Commission in the Upper House on Wednesday, Fedefruta president Juan Carolus Brown said that the two strikes by workers at the Port of San Antonio had “caused huge uncertainty among fruit producers, harming the sector and endangering the jobs of hundreds of millions of farm workers”.

Brown said the creation of a new law was essential to prevent such a situation from happening again in the future. “Fruit cannot wait around for a conflict to be resolved without its quality deteriorating,” he told the commission. “If shipments are halted it means fruit can’t be harvested and the entire production chain comes to a standstill.”

The law was first proposed by former Fedefruta president Cristían Allendes who was in charge of the association during the last two strikes, which are estimated to have caused losses of more than US$200m to the sector and put 300,000 jobs at risk.

“The Chilean fruit industry is in no condition to face another crisis of this type,” Brown told the commission, adding that the creation of a new law was one of the main objectives of his presidency.

Fedefruta is also calling for a new body to be established to regulate activity at the country’s ports in order to anticipate future problems.

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