By Antynet Ford

Kenya slashed export rejections by 72 per cent, in 2025, due to roses being infested with False Coddling Moth, a pest so severe in 2024 that the EU increased the rules and inspections on Kenya’s fresh produce exports to try and prevent its entry.

In 2024, 48 rose and flower consignments from Kenya were rejected by the EU due to the pest. By contrast, from January to November 2025, this fell to just 14 flower rejections of roses and sea holly, according to an analysis of European Union border data and Kenyan phytosanitary records by FarmBizAfrica.

This brought the total number of Kenya’s rejected horticultural exports due to pests down to 82 in the first 11 months of 2025, from 110 in 2024.

But the improvement was substantially undermined by a parallel surge in thrip infestations and rising FCM infestations in other crops.

FCM has been classified as a regulated quarantine pest by the EU since 2017, meaning it is strictly controlled to prevent it entering Europe in imported produce. This has seen the persistent and increasing contamination in Kenyan flowers lead to increased EU inspections of the country’s fresh produce, with now a quarter of imports opened and inspected.

As recently as 2020, just 5 per cent of Kenyan  consignments were inspected, but since May 2024, the inspection rate has been 25 per cent, with each inspection raising extra costs for exporters, and deterring buyers.

For this reason, the EU regulations, (EU) 2024/2004, which came into effect in April last year and imposed the newest, more stringent pest management measures for EU imports, led to the declaration in Kenya of a zero tolerance policy to FCM and the implementation by regulator KePHIS of the Rose FCMSA protocol. 

However, while the move to curb FCM on Kenya’s flower farms, and prevent the dispatch of FCM-infested flowers, has slashed flower rejections, notifications due to the same pest on other horticultural exports, specifically bell peppers and eggplants, ballooned last year, from just one non-flower rejection in 2024 to 9 in 2025.

“The new pre export controls include mandatory field-level surveillance on flower farms, cold treatment protocols, stricter packhouse inspections, and reinforced compliance requirements for exporters supplying the EU market,” said agronomist Mordechai Nyongesa.

“Before you even export, the interception is made at JKIA hence the result is fewer EU notifications, not fewer flowers.”

But many of the non-flower crops now suffering an increase in FCM infestations involve fragmented smallholder supply chains, variable treatment compliance, and limited cold-chain infrastructure, making uniform phytosanitary control more difficult.

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Mordechai argues that applying the flower sector’s compliance model across other horticultural value chains could significantly reduce EU interceptions, lower rejection costs, and safeguard Kenya’s competitive position in high-value export markets.

But, for many agriculturalists, the evidence that FCM infestations are now spreading across smallholders’ horticultural crops raises broader questions on how to more effectively control the pest to reduce its spread across Kenya, and not only to the EU.

Additional research by Dick Wagaluka.

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