Estimates Debate — Vote Food Safety

The ongoing crisis of the lead contamination of cornflour in our food supply has demonstrated just how inadequate, poorly resourced, and ill-equipped our food safety agency is to protect the safety of our food supply. Lead contamination up to 100 times our legal limit in a staple product like cornflour is an extremely serious breach of our regulations, but the response of the Food Safety Authority to this food safety crisis has so far been woefully inadequate. Indeed, consumers’ confidence in the safety of our food and the ability of the agency to protect our food supply has been rocked by this incident. I have had furious consumers emailing and phoning me all day asking how a poisonous hazardous substance like lead could find its way into our food supply and remain there for 6 months undetected, and why, when finally this contamination was found by accident in a 5-yearly survey of our food, it took 10 days for the Food Safety Authority to tell New Zealanders it had discovered significant contamination of cornflour in our food supply.

The Acting Minister said in the Chamber today that the Government had “acted swiftly” on the issue, had “exposed a problem”, and was “moving on it quickly”, and I wondered whether he meant that as some sort of joke. Does he consider that taking 6 months to track down a significant contamination is “acting swiftly”, and that taking 11 days before bothering to tell New Zealanders or issuing any press release about a significant contamination of our food supply is a swift and adequate response? What a joke!

Why does the Minister for Food Safety not use her powers under section 40 of the Food Act to recall all products that have been found to contain cornflour contaminated with lead up to 100 times more than is permissible by law? Let us remember that only a number of months ago the Minister for Food Safety mandatorily recalled 700 dietary supplements, even though there was no demonstrable risk from those products, and, indeed, no investigation has shown that that mandatory recall of 700 products was essential. But here is a known contamination by a poisonous hazardous substance, and the Minister is refusing to issue a mandatory recall. Why has the Government once again put the interests of food manufacturers ahead of consumers, and refused to release even a list of the foods known to have been contaminated with lead? Surely, we consumers have a right to be told the truth of the situation, and to know what products are contaminated, so that we can make up our minds whether we want to eat them. We do not want to have some arrogant food safety agency saying: “I’m not going to tell you, because we’ve decided that this level of contamination is safe.” I have called, and I will be repeating my call, not just for the products to be identified and for that information to be released publicly, but also for the test results of all the foods that have been contaminated to be released.

Why is the Food Safety Authority running around telling New Zealanders that there are no short-term or long-term risks from consuming cornflour contaminated with lead up to 100 times the legal limit? Is it unaware of international research showing that there is no safe level of lead, and that even in low concentrations it can impair children’s intellectual ability? Had it talked to the Ministry of Health before it issued this falsely reassuring and, indeed, inaccurate and dishonest advice? Consumers just want to be told the truth. They want the Food Safety Authority to be honest and to give impartial, fair, and balanced advice, but what they seem to be getting is propaganda.

The other issue that consumers need reassuring on is whether the contaminated cornflour that we have been told about is simply the tip of the iceberg, or whether the contamination is far more widespread than we might know. Originally, we were told that only 45 tonnes of cornflour were contaminated with lead, but now it turns out that two more batches of 45 tonnes were contaminated with lead.

I was not going to take a call, but I cannot sit here and see the Food Safety Authority accused of being dishonest. That is absolutely outrageous, and the sooner that member is more honest in her criticism—and she is entitled to criticise the operations of the Food Safety Authority—the sooner New Zealanders will know what is going on. The authority was established in 2002 and has been in place since then. It has been formulating policies and systems to ensure that the food that we consume and process in this country, and the food we export as well, is safe.

I would like to tell the member that lead is a naturally occurring substance, and that there are probably minute trace elements and particles of lead in most of the things that we consume. The issue here is the level. Clearly, the level found in the cornflour was above—in fact, in some of the samples it was estimated to be 100 times above—what we consider to be a safe human consumption level. Indications at this point are that the contamination has occurred not from the corn itself, but from some process of transportation, whether it be from the ship, a truck, or whatever. But somehow, there has been contamination. The fact that we identified that and were able to move on it quickly says that the systems put in place by an organisation that has only been up and running since 2002 are very, very good. The authority has moved to eliminate any risk to the New Zealand public and consumers, because the systems have identified and told us the product lines that we have to test and those that should be withdrawn. That has occurred, and I would like to congratulate the staff of the authority—not sit back and allow them to be accused time and time again by the Green Party and Sue Kedgley, who misleads or attempts to mislead the New Zealand public into believing that the Food Safety Authority is working against them. That is not true. It is there to protect the consumers of this country. It is also there to ensure that we, as an economy, are able to export quality, safe food around the world.

I just ask the Green Party once again to be more honest in its criticism and assessment of what is happening with regard to the Food Safety Authority.