They prompted a global outpouring of support for farmers. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk offered a $1 million support package for the local industry the following day. But surveillance video of the Donnybrook Berries packing facility from 2017, obtained by Brisbane Times, shows the business discarded at least 10 tonnes of fruit a day at the height of that year’s season, more than a year before the first reports emerged of fruit having been tampered with. Donnybrook Berries, which has a long-standing contract to supply Coles, is owned by Pasquale “Pat” Cufari, a convicted drug trafficker from Mildura linked to the Italian Mafia in a secret 2003 report by the Australian Crime Commission. Donnybrook Berries' Twin View Road property. Credit:Mark Solomons His business was one of those directly affected by the tampering crisis but appears to have weathered the crisis much better than other local farms.

It has been accused by local residents of flouting environmental, planning and transport laws with impunity, including clearing protected bushland, sinking dams without permission and illegally running B-double trucks on rural roads. Throughout the second half of August 2017 a truck identical to the one shown in the September 2018 video can be seen leaving the Donnybrook packing plant each day full of fruit, returning empty about 10 minutes later. The footage indicates at least 140 tonnes of strawberries being discarded somewhere nearby. The September 2018 video was posted by Stephanie Chheang, the stepdaughter of Donnybrook manager Joe Cufari, who is Pasquale Cufari’s son. Ms Chheang wrote in an accompanying message, widely quoted in media reports, that “this here is worth more than you could ever imagine and within three days we lost it all”. She blamed “selfish individuals” for ruining years of work by her parents Sreymom Cufari and Joe Cufari building up the Donnybrook Berries business.

Brisbane Times put detailed questions about the video to the Donnybrook business. It did not respond. Donnybrook was one of two farm businesses initially hit by the contamination crisis in September 2018. Last November, Caboolture woman My Ut Trinh, 50, was charged over the alleged tampering of fruit at a neighbouring farm, where she worked. No-one has yet been charged over the tampering of fruit sold under the Donnybrook brand. My Ut Trinh was charged in November, 2018. Credit:Dan Peled/AAP A $100,000 reward remains on offer for information in the case.

Local strawberry growers said there could be a number of reasons for dumping fruit - a factor not explored during the 2018 tampering crisis. Loading Second-generation Queensland farmer Laura Wells said wastage during the packing season could range from 1 to 80 per cent of a year’s crop and depended on a range of factors including weather events, pest management and to a lesser extent, buyer requirements. Ms Wells said she did not recall any significant weather or market event during 2017 that would have led to unusually high wastage, but added that every farm was managed differently. She said there were few uses for discarded fruit, other than feeding it to cattle, but even then it could not be given to animals destined to be used for meat.

Luigi Coco, president of the Queensland Strawberry Growers Association, said he had no doubt the Donnybrook operation had discarded far more fruit in 2018 than the previous year. “He is a very large grower, produces a lot of fruit for Coles. He would have had to dump a lot of fruit,” Mr Coco said. “He probably would have dumped a lot more than you guys saw in a video. I was told of fruit that he just left in his trucks and turned the fans off, and that means when the staff got there they would have had to dump that fruit, which you would have never seen.” Mr Coco added that 100 tonnes was not a large quantity of berries in relation to the output of the Donnybrook business. “For that size farm, 100 tonne is nothing,” he said.

Mr Coco said fruit had been dumped for different reasons in 2018. “Growers weren’t complaining about the fruit that they traditionally dumped because it’s poor quality," he said. Loading “Growers were complaining about when they had paid to pick the product, to pick the fruit, and then had to dump it because they were told it couldn’t be moved.” Ms Chheang’s September 2018 video was licensed to the website of Ireland-based media company Storyful, a service set up to verify social media video that describes itself as “the world’s social media intelligence and news agency”. Anyone seeking to use the video commercially must pay a licence fee.

Storyful did not answer questions about the steps it had taken to verify the video or about the licensing arrangement or who had benefited financially from it. Pasquale Cufari’s business has expanded rapidly into Queensland, spending more than $6 million in the last three years buying strawberry farms and related property near the Elimbah packing plant and at Stanthorpe on the Queensland-NSW border. Donnybrook Berries Property Holdings paid a total of more than $3 million for two rural properties in Elimbah in 2016. The following year it spent a further $4 million buying a larger fruit farm a few kilometres east near Bribie Island and another at Thulimbah near Stanthorpe near the NSW border, where the colder climate means the strawberry season can be extended into the summer. Local residents have complained that the Donnybrook business cleared protected bushland and sunk dams without permission at its Elimbah properties and claim it has repeatedly flouted environmental, planning and transport laws with impunity. They accused the local Moreton Bay Regional Council of failing to act despite knowing of the breaches. The council has said it is investigating some of the allegations but has not responded to questions about why it dropped enforcement action over the more serious breaches.