Media coverage of the UK government-funded report by Nicholas Stern referred to data previously cited by former UK minister Stephen Byers suggesting that flying 1kg of kiwifruit from New Zealand to Europe causes 5kg of carbon to be discharged into the atmosphere.

The minister has previously called for application of taxes on food miles, an issue that is particularly sensitive in New Zealand with its valuable food exports.

New Zealand ministers, increasingly concerned about the weight of food miles in Europe, yesterday jumped to the kiwi growers' defence.

"Calls for food miles to be used in fact contradict the goal of reducing global emissions and are often a thinly disguised appeal for self-interested protectionism," said trade minister Phil Goff in a statement yesterday.

Melanie Palmer, communications manager for Zespri growers, told AP-Foodtechnology that the remark was surprising as the firm does not air freight its produce to Europe.

"We definitely refute claims that kiwis are contributing to global warming as we ship almost all of the fruit," she said.

Palmer pointed to a Lincoln University report published in July this year that showed that products such as onions, lamb and apples were more efficiently produced in New Zealand even after transport was taken into account.

The study found energy and carbon dioxide emissions used in producing New Zealand lamb were around a quarter of those required to produce British lamb.

Goff added that the United Kingdom's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has made it clear that food miles do not take into account the total energy use or CO2 emissions associated with producing and delivering a product to market.

Although Zespri and other food producers like Fonterra do not expect media coverage of food miles to influence buyer behaviour, the debate is unlikely to go away and prime minister Helen Clark warned that it must be taken seriously.

She told National Radio that the latest coverage of the issue reinforced her message that unless New Zealand was being seen as going the extra mile on sustainability it ran the risk of being labelled "a country of unsustainable producers and major carbon emitters (by) even trying to get our produce to market".

"So we really do have to take these issues extremely seriously and be mindful of our reputation as an economy," she said.