A Norwich charity which aims to ensure bananas are fairly traded is echoing warnings that a virus is spreading across the globe, threatening banana farms.
The Panama disease kills the banana plant and a new strain has been jumping from continent to continent.
Wiping out plantations in East Asia, Mozambique, the Middle East and recently travelling to Australia, there is a fear that it could move to the Americas and Caribbean where the majority of the world's bananas are grown.
There is currently no cure for the diseases and it is affecting the Cavendish banana - the type of the fruit which 99pc of the world enjoys.
BananaLink is a Norwich-based charity which helps ensure workers receive decent wages, have good conditions of work and tries to reduce the environmental impact of growing the fruit.
Alistair Smith, the St George's Street charity's international co-ordinator, said: 'No one knows how it's travelling, but it would wipe out bananas as we know it - no one knows how to stop it killing the plants. It could be this year it jumps to the Americas, it could be in five years' time, but we need to look at other varieties and we don't believe genetically modified bananas are the answer.
'It is the most popular fruit and people would clearly miss it. Every woman man and child consumes the equivalent of a full case of bananas every year - including babies. The big issue is the millions of people whose livelihoods depend on bananas, for them there is no short term solution.'
Mr Smith added that some plantations in the Philippines have already gone out of business, and there are very few other ways for the people who worked there to make money.
He said: 'In the UK we have extremely low prices, unsustainable low prices, there is not enough to go around and all along the chain people are squeezed.'
Unless there is a suitable alternative or a cure for the virus, he believes it could be the end of the banana as we know it.
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