Estimates Debate — Vote Food Safety

First, I would like to endorse the remarks of the previous speaker, Gordon Copeland, about the need to investigate the price of milk and to decouple the New Zealand price from the international price, and to start to investigate the prices not just of milk but also of other consumer goods on sale in New Zealand. We are finding huge profit margins. I think there was a profit margin of 286 percent on a piece of pumpkin in the supermarket. We are finding, as Gordon Copeland has said, substantial profit margins in respect of the price of milk that seem to be exorbitant and not justified by the inputs into them. So the Green Party would strongly endorse the need for the Commerce Commission, or the Commerce Committee of this Parliament, to investigate these matters.

I would like to talk briefly on the food safety estimates, and I have the Primary Production Committee’s report on the food safety estimates here before me. It is a rather disappointing and shallow report, I am afraid, and it underscores for me that certainly the food safety aspects of the Food Safety Authority should be investigated—I believe by the Health Committee rather than by the Primary Production Committee. The issues of huge concern to New Zealanders, relating to the Food Safety Authority, are precisely health issues—issues of food safety. Frankly, I am astonished that the select committee in its report did not allude to the fact, or did not seem to realise, that there is growing concern amongst New Zealanders at the failure of the Food Safety Authority in New Zealand to protect food safety.

Indeed, a series of food safety scares has undermined consumers’ confidence in the safety of food, and in the ability of the Food Safety Authority to be independent or to protect consumer interests. Only last week, I think it was on Thursday, we had yet another food safety scare, when the Food Safety Authority discovered that a genetically engineered type of rice, which had not been approved for animal or human consumption anywhere in the world—anywhere in the world—was on sale here in New Zealand. In fact, 3 tonnes of it had already been sold, presumably to households around New Zealand. How is it possible that an illegal and unapproved genetically engineered type of rice would be imported into New Zealand, come through our borders, be on sale, and be sold around New Zealand without anybody picking that up? This is the sort of almost monthly scare, it seems, that has completely undermined consumers’ confidence in the ability of the Food Safety Authority to protect food safety.

It is said in the report that one of the purposes in the rather modest budget the Food Safety Authority has is the provision of reliable information for consumers on food issues. Well, if this is the Food Safety Authority’s mandate—if this is what it is funded to do—could somebody please explain to me why our authority is adamantly, passionately, and militantly opposed to the consumers’ right to know where their food comes from? Actually, I would also be deeply interested in knowing why National and Labour are opposed to the right of ordinary consumers to work out where their food comes from, and why those parties, along with the Food Safety Authority, are opposing a petition that I brought to Parliament, signed by 39,000 New Zealanders—which New Zealanders were lining up to sign—to require country-of-origin labelling to be disclosed on fresh fruit, vegetables, meat, and fish. This labelling is extremely inexpensive and easy to do, because it would be point-of-sale labelling. It could be implemented tomorrow without cost, yet our Food Safety Authority is opposing it, along with National and Labour, and despite the fact that the authority has a specific objective that it is funded for—to provide reliable information for consumers on food issues.

When I explain to consumers in New Zealand that the Food Safety Authority and National and Labour are opposed to their fundamental right to know where their food comes from, they are appalled. They want to know why, when we are importing 1.8 million tonnes of food into New Zealand, those bodies will not allow us to find out where it comes from. Thank you.

Vote agreed to.

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