Food Bill

It is a pleasure to rise and speak in the Committee stage of the Food Bill, having sat through endless hours in the Primary Production Committee listening to submissions on the formation of, and amendments to, this bill. I think it is probably worth noting at the beginning the chronology of the bill. The bill was first introduced into the House on 26 May 2010, it had its first reading on 27 July 2010, and was reported on by the Primary Production Committee on 16 December 2010. On 2 July 2013 it was returned to the Primary Production Committee for a second round, having been delayed and then revisited as a result of the whey protein concentrate scare. The select committee had a couple of substantial goes at amending the original bill and then the Supplementary Order Paper that subsequently followed as a result of that.

The points that were made by the select committee are well covered in the commentary that the select committee reported back to the House, and it is worth touching on a couple of those. To the purpose of the bill we recommended adding clause 4(ba) to make it clear that one of the primary purposes of the bill is to maintain New Zealand’s reputation as a producer and exporter of safe and suitable food. I think that cuts right to the nub of what this bill is about, at one end of it, and that is that New Zealand is an export nation of protein-based food—and other types of food, but predominantly protein-based food—which have the opportunity, I guess, within them to carry all sorts of potential dangers from a food safety point of view. To have a robust legislative framework around controls and Government responses to those types of risks from a reputational point of view is an essential ingredient to New Zealand’s economy—more than I think most people realise, given that something like 72 to 73 percent of all export earnings from New Zealand come from our primary sector. That was a major consideration in the deliberations on this bill.

At the other end of the spectrum, of course, you have the small fund-raising committees, etc., such as Lions, Rotary clubs, marae, school calf days, those kinds of things, where there was a pretty heavy-handed, bureaucratic approach, and so it was decided that there must be a better way. Through, like I say, a long process we believe that we have arrived at a point where we have achieved that. I look forward to debating various parts of this bill as it moves through the Committee.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak in this Committee stage of the Food Bill. I believe I may have just nipped ahead of my colleague Mr O’Connor. I will start this off.

I am pleased to be speaking in this Committee stage. This is a significant piece of legislation. As we know, it has had many years in development, going all the way back to when Labour was in Government. It is a very important piece of legislation because we need a modern, risk-based food safety regime. As we are on Part 1, I would like to start my contribution right at the very start, where clause 3(1) says: “This Act replaces the Food Act 1981.” That is a very welcome provision because that is a very outdated piece of legislation—30-plus years old—and it has caused a host of difficulties for many small businesses and territorial authorities right across the country over a long period of time. It is very welcome that we will be putting this bill through so that we can see the repeal of that particular piece of legislation.

Just to give you an example, there are many small businesses across the country that have been stymied at times by overly bureaucratic territorial authorities that have been trying to fit the archaic piece of legislation, the Food Act 1981, to the operations of modern food vendors and modern purveyors of kai, of food. To give you an example, we have had a host of some really bizarre situations—for instance, a cafe owner in Tūrangi, Ms Upston’s great electorate. Unfortunately, the district council there insisted that with the installation of a new toasted-sandwich maker, that cafe had to install a commercial-grade extractor that cost more than $7,000—just because the cafe operator wanted to have a toasted-sandwich maker. Fortunately, these absolutely really bizarre draconian measures that have been placed on cafe owners are eliminated through the introduction of this legislation.

There are other examples, such as the kuias, the old ladies, up in the far north who made strawberry jam and sold it at the local Kerikeri hospice charity shop. Those lovely dear ladies found that they had to produce their jam in a commercial kitchen, so they were technically contravening the law. Again, these really bizarre outcomes stymied the entrepreneurial spirit and the generosity of these small businesses.

There are other examples of territorial authorities really struggling with the one-size-fits-all prescriptive approach of the Food Act 1981, because, as we know, back in the early 1980s it was far different from what we have today. I think it was simpler. We did have fish and chips and fast food, but we did not have things like, I guess, online purchases of food. The industrial techniques of producing food have really come on in leaps and bounds over that period of time. Therefore, the legislation of 1981 is really out of date, and it is a very welcome move under this legislation that we will finally say goodbye not only to that Act but also to the prescriptive regulations that were promulgated under that piece of legislation, because those regulations added to the complexity and the cost and the bizarre outcomes for small-business owners. What we are getting under this piece of legislation is a much more suitable piece of legislation that fits all types of food businesses, from the small coffee cart and the small cottage-industry jam-maker right through to the big industrial processes and, indeed, exporters.

It is a well-thought-through piece of legislation, and can I commend all of the officials who have spent many years on this and also, especially, members of the Primary Production Committee, who have given it very close consideration and made some very good improvements, especially Supplementary Order Paper 278 from the Minister for Food Safety. Things like the good old Kiwiana sausage sizzle have been given due recognition that they do not need overly bureaucratic sorts of food standards and other compliance measures placed over the top of them. So there are some real common-sense amendments that have been made to get the bill to this Committee stage.

But there is one glaring omission in this bill in Part 1. Thankfully, my colleague the Hon Damien O’Connor has proposed a very sensible amendment in Supplementary Order Paper 440 that there be country-of-origin labelling included in clause 4. That is very important because we on this side of the Chamber and many other parties here—except for Peter Dunne, whom this amendment really rests on—believe that Kiwis have the right to know the origin of the food that they consume and that they purchase. It should be implemented through this Supplementary Order Paper. I encourage the members of this Committee to take the opportunity to make this very sensible improvement to Part 1 so that we do add that element of, as Mr O’Connor calls it, COOL—to adopt the acronym for country-of-origin labelling. I am not really getting any jokes out of this. We need to adopt the cool. We need some coolness. We need to put some cool into the country-of-origin labelling in clause 4.

I would like to go back to my favourite example, which is the good old Kiwi sausage, the banger, and bacon. Very few Kiwis know that the majority of the pork that is consumed in this country actually comes all the way from Canada, North America. Should there be country-of-origin labelling, I think people will be a bit more thoughtful in terms of the origin of their pork, of their food, and where it comes from. They do have a right to know. So that is one sensible amendment that I do recommend in my contribution on this first part. Thank you.

I have to apologise to my colleague Rino Tirikatene, whom I left out in the lurch a little bit. I was trying to escape a meeting.

We welcome the Food Bill into the Committee. It has been a long time coming. In debating Part 1 of the bill I would like to, firstly, acknowledge some of the officials there, many of whom have been around for as long as this bill has and as long as I have, which is quite some time. We hope that the ageing of the bill, like a good wine, has improved it. A number of Ministers for Food Safety have overseen it, and I welcome the current Minister’s comments on a number of the provisions.

In Part 1 of the bill we have, as rightfully it should be, the purpose of the bill. I have, as my colleague noted, proposed an amendment on Supplementary Order Paper 440, which we believe is essential to finish off what is, essentially, a very good bill, following almost 10 years, I guess, of consideration of assessment by the Primary Production Committee on, indeed, a couple of occasions and, as I say, oversight and input from people up and down this country on at least two occasions and other opportunities through consultation with officials.

If I can go to the purpose of the bill, it is, indeed, an amalgam of pieces of legislation that have been around for a while. We are attempting to align those pieces of legislation to give better effect to the purpose of producing safe food, maintaining New Zealand’s reputation, and ensuring that consumers get a good deal from a country that we say—and I think we can rightfully say—is one of the best producers of food in the world, bar none.

The purpose of the bill, and I can read out clause 4, is to: “(a) restate and reform the law relating to how persons trade in food; and (b) achieve the safety and suitability of food for sale; and (ba) maintain confidence in New Zealand’s food safety regime”. That was an amendment put up by the Primary Production Committee to emphasise the reality that the confidence that the public have in the legislation around food should not be in question, and that this is not a partisan piece of legislation. It has been endorsed, and I hope it will be, by all parties across the House because we have attempted to achieve the very best outcome. The inclusion of that subclause in the purpose clause, that is, to maintain the confidence in New Zealand’s food safety regime, was an important addition.

The next subclause is to “(c) provide for risk-based measures that—(i) minimise and manage risks to public health; and (ii) protect and promote public health.” That is a very important part and objective of this piece of legislation. The fourth one is to “(d) provide certainty for food businesses in relation to how the requirements of this Act will affect their activities;”

We have, up and down this country—from the very largest producers of food to the very smallest and most innovative and creative, at times—people who, in classic Kiwi style, get out, look around them, see what opportunities there are and often through biological production systems, be it through grapes or honey and bees or through new fruit varieties, come up with a new food that they want to manufacture, or, indeed, to just sell in its raw form. This piece of legislation has to give them certainty so that the time and the money that they might invest in that production system is supported through legislation, through good regulations, and through a system that is going to give them the opportunity to develop that further.

If I can use the example, going back some time, of kiwifruit, the humble Chinese gooseberry, which was grown on a few farms and in a few gardens around the place and has now become a billion-dollar industry because the regulations were sound, and because of the ability for those growers to develop the intellectual property, the varieties, and to get out there and develop the systems of handling, of storage, and of sale—the legislation had to support that development through the years. We are upgrading the legislation to modernise it and to make it fit for purpose.

The next thing here is subclause (d), to “provide certainty for food businesses”, and then moving on to clause 4(e), which is to “require persons who trade in food to take responsibility for the safety and suitability of that food.” [Interruption] I acknowledge the Minister, and I would welcome responses.

This is, I guess, an area where responsibility is placed back on to the people in the food sector themselves. The risk-based system that we are proposing puts trust in them to do what they say they are going to do in administering the regime at whatever level. The people who are taking responsibility are those who are trading in food and it is about ensuring that they deliver to their consumers, to their customers, food that is not too old, does not have contaminants in it, or does not have food safety issues that might harm them in any way. The regime that we have is a very stringent risk-based system for those from the very top—Fonterra and the big producers—down to the person selling sausages for the sausage sizzle. There are different requirements that ultimately depend upon the individuals involved, or the companies involved, to implement what they say they will do. The officials can never be there every moment of every day. I think we are lucky to be in a country that has people of integrity, systems of integrity, and regulations that are generally sound and sensible. We should be able to trust the systems once this legislation passes.

All those objectives, we say, are sound, but there is one missing, and I know I have had discussions with the Minister—hopefully, she has seen the light of day to come and support us—on mandatory country-of-origin labelling, informing the consumers who buy the food where the food was produced and manufactured. We say that it is a core right of any consumer to know where the food they are eating has come from. We are part of a trans-Tasman arrangement, the Food Standards Australia New Zealand authority, which says that we share with Australia the same regime for risk-based systems, for food safety, and for labelling. So using CER and the transfer of goods either side of the Tasman aligns and makes that system more simple.

But New Zealand sought an exemption from those trans-Tasman regulations that allows us to not have country-of-origin labelling. For a country so dependent upon food production for our survival and our prosperity, it is absolutely bizarre that we do not have country-of-origin labelling—something that identifies clearly the food produced in this country under regulation that would allow consumers to know whether that food was produced and manufactured in New Zealand or whether it was produced somewhere else in the world.

I am proposing Supplementary Order Paper 440 and an amendment that would add to the purpose clause in the bill a requirement to introduce country-of-origin labelling requirements in accordance with the Australia - New Zealand food standards code. The exemption that we have—and the Minister might say “Oh, it’s not appropriate to have this in the bill.” That is absolutely wrong. It is appropriate that we have in the purpose of this bill a requirement to align ourselves with the agreed regulations that are currently in place on both sides of the Tasman. So I welcome the Minister’s response as to why the National Party and its two coalition partners, Peter Dunne and Mr Banks, are not supporting something that the vast majority of the public expects.

Country-of origin labelling is taking place in some areas through a voluntary code, but it is not mandatory and, in fact, there are many occasions when consumers are confused as to where the food they are purchasing is grown and manufactured. We will be putting to the Committee this amendment to the purpose in Part 1 of the bill, and I hope that the Government can see the wisdom in supporting that for the good of the consumers and for their right to have information and knowledge about the food that they are going to consume.

I am very pleased to take this call in the Committee of the whole House stage. Can I start by acknowledging that this is, I think, a great day for New Zealand. It has been over 10 years in the making. There have been many officials in a number of administrations who have worked on this Food Bill. I want to acknowledge what I acknowledged in the second reading. There have been several Ministers. I also want to acknowledge the huge amount of work across this House that has gone into making this bill better. I acknowledge also that this bill is supported by the Labour Party, the Green Party, United Future, the ACT Party, I believe, and I think Brendan Horan is supporting it too. I think when we come to the purpose of this bill, we can see why it has such cross-party support. It has cross-party support because at the heart of this bill is, actually, our nation’s economy. If we do not get food safety right, then all of us are much poorer and our quality of life is poorer.

What this bill does is two things. The first is that it says we are actually going to base our food law on the risk of food and not buildings. We are on the cusp of replacing the 30-year-old statute, which will actually ensure that food safety is based on the risk of food, not buildings and an outdated un-modern statute. The second key thing that has actually been at the heart of much of what I think was genuine concern about this statute is allowing New Zealanders to do what they have always done and to not have compliance costs on so many small businesses. That is why I am very pleased that the Primary Production Committee gave a lot of attention to understanding the impact on small businesses. This is a sliding scale regime. The advice that I have had is that $40 million in compliance costs will go out the window with this bill. The third thing, as we saw, was the sausage sizzle issue. That was an issue very dear to the heart of New Zealanders. I think the select committee has really improved the bill to ensure that those community groups that are fund-raising can go on and do what they have always done. I really think this is a great bill from the perspective that not only is it going to help so many small businesses across New Zealand have consistency in terms of food safety regulation but also it is going to reduce compliance costs and it is going to enable New Zealanders to do what they have always done.

There are a couple of Supplementary Order Papers, and I just want to address both Supplementary Order Paper 440, which Damien O’Connor put forward, and also Steffan Browning’s variation within the House, Supplementary Order Paper 449. From our perspective, New Zealand has country of origin labelling. It is voluntary. I have actually been doing some work to look at what that coverage is. What I can tell the Committee is that the advice that I have had is that, in terms of single-ingredient country of origin labelling—and I want to talk about the difference in a second—we estimate about 70 percent of coverage happens in terms of country of origin labelling for single ingredients. That is, about 70 percent of fruit, vegetables, and meat in our supermarkets have country of origin labelling. So the question is twofold. How do we, possibly, encourage more of that? Secondly, is it appropriate in this statute to pass a law that requires mandatory country of origin labelling?

The first point I want to make—and I think this is very relevant for the Opposition—is that some of the advice I have had is that we would actually be breaching the Australia - New Zealand food treaty if we passed this law. We have set up a regime where we have been really clear—and Mr O’Connor, you have mentioned in your speech—that we develop standards with Australia. Yes, they have developed a standard in this area, but we absolutely have the ability to adopt country of origin labelling through that process that we have agreed to with Australia. To pass a law via statute rather than the code is actually not the process that we agreed to with Australia. From my perspective, it is not appropriate in this bill.

However, I want to raise a couple of issues generally around country of origin labelling. The other point I want to make to the Opposition is that they may not be aware but Australia has just launched an inquiry into country of origin labelling. The advice that I have had is that part of what the committee chairing that inquiry said in Australia is that there is widespread confusion there around the differences in terminology between “made in Australia”, “product of Australia”, and “made from Australian”. What this is about is actually recognising that although it may be relatively easy to deal with single ingredient country of origin labelling, when you are asking and trying to pass a law for when you may have 10 to 12 different ingredients, the reality, as I think Australia is finding, is one, the complexity of trying to then label the source of all of those products; two, the cost to business to be able to do that; and, then, three—and this is why I think Australia has launched this inquiry—how meaningful it is actually to consumers if you have got a whole lot of different sources of ingredients.

I want to finish that issue by saying that the Government does at this point support voluntary country of origin labelling. We do think, from the advice that I have had—but I am going to do a bit more work on it—that we have got quite a lot of take up around single-ingredient country of origin labelling, but in terms of comprehensive country of origin labelling I would encourage the Opposition to look at the fact that Australia is actually launching an inquiry into this issue, because, I think, of the confusion, the complexity, and the cost.

Again, I want to acknowledge why we are here. We are here, in part, to reduce compliance costs to businesses. We are here to ensure there is much greater alignment across the country in terms of food safety laws. In terms of the purpose of the bill, as well, we are here to ensure that New Zealanders can go on and do what they have always done. I think, as well, we are also here—and I want to acknowledge the select committee and its patience on this issue—because we had a major food safety incident last year. I think what that incident outlined for us was, one, the importance of food safety to New Zealand and our economy, and, secondly, the need to ensure that we not only get our primary legislation right but also do whatever we can to reduce complexity in some of those tertiary instruments. I think this is a great bill. It is going to be great for New Zealand. I want to acknowledge again, although we may have a few differences in terms of some of the Supplementary Order Papers, the incredible support that has happened across the Committee to make this bill better. Thank you.

I am pleased to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to take a call in this Committee of the whole House as we continue to debate the Food Bill. I would just like to say, first off, following on from the Minister for Food Safety, that we will be supporting Supplementary Order Paper 440 in the name of Damien O’Connor and also Supplementary Order Paper 449 in the name of Steffan Browning, which is very similar and complementary. In this part of our deliberations I want to focus on some of the perhaps less glamorous aspects of the bill. In any piece of legislation there will be much that is mundane yet none the less necessary. Not every subclause or annotated paragraph will set the world on fire, but each of them provides an essential cog in the machinery of law. With that in mind, the first thing I want to look at is Part 1, clause 8, which relates to the meaning of food.

To an independent observer, this may appear to be a somewhat unnecessary consideration. The average citizen, I might posit, could perhaps be forgiven for presuming that the definition of “food” was a fairly straightforward affair: if you eat something, it is food. Not so in the eyes of the law. The proof of that particular pudding is in Part 1, clause 8, “Meaning of food”. In this bill clause 8(1) states: “unless the context otherwise requires, food—(a) means anything that is used, capable of being used, or represented as being for use, for human consumption (whether raw, prepared, or partly prepared); and (b) includes—(i) seeds, plants, or plant material intended for human consumption, including seeds that are intended to be sprouted and consumed as sprouts, but not other seeds, plants, or plant material intended for planting;”.

So a potato is food, but a seed spud is not. What is the difference between a spud and a seed spud, one might ask. Well, a seed spud is a spud that has gone to seed. It may have been grown especially with that purpose in mind. As such, it could rightly be classified as not being intended for human consumption. Equally, it may be an ordinary spud originally intended for eating but that has somehow been overlooked—it may have languished at the bottom of the bag, at the back of the pantry, alone and forlorn in the dark until it has thrown out a few of those pale, spindly shoots by which the life force of the potato plant attempts to replicate itself. At that time the intention for it to become the subject of human consumption is extinguished. Under the definition in the law as it is enshrined in this bill, it is therefore no longer food. That is not to say that such a spud can be presumed to now be intended for planting. Such an accidental seed spud may well find itself in the charge and care of a non-gardener, and it may very well come to end its days in the compost bin or worse. But that is of no matter. The important point is that it is no longer food in a legal sense. This is an important distinction, and one that has to be made. I would venture to suggest to the House that this bill makes that distinction rather well.

Food is also defined, under clause 8(1)(b), as “(ii) live animals intended for human consumption at the place of purchase; and (iii) live animals intended for human consumption that are sold in retail premises;”. I presume this refers primarily to such comestibles as lobster, or perhaps live shellfish, but, equally, it could conceivably include live chickens purchased for later preparation. Again, this is an important consideration, because if the bill did not contain a specific reference to the intention for the live animal to be for human consumption, every pet shop in the country might find itself in a very unenviable position. Once again, we see the tiny cogs of the great machine performing their sterling service, mostly unseen and, presumably, underappreciated, but, none the less, completely necessary.

The bill also provides, under the definition of the meaning of food, “(iv) any ingredient or other constituent of any food or drink, whether that ingredient or other constituent is consumed or represented for consumption on its own by humans, or is used in the preparation of, or mixed with or added to, any food or drink; and (v) anything that is or is intended to be mixed with or added to any food or drink; and (vi) chewing gum, and any ingredient of chewing gum, and anything that is or is intended to be mixed with or added to chewing gum;”. So chewing gum is food. This may come as something of a surprise to members. It has come to pass that generations of children were right all along and their parents were wrong.

Chewing gum is food because Parliament, by its sovereign power and authority, has decreed that it be so. Tobacco, however, is not food, and rightly so. I think most members, if not all, would agree that tobacco is not food—at least not food for humans. This includes chewing tobacco. Unlike chewing gum, chewing tobacco may not lawfully be food. It is not the act of chewing, therefore, that makes it food, or even the non-swallowing of the substance in question. Neither chewing gum nor chewing tobacco are intended to be ingested, which may, in itself, seem somewhat incongruous in terms of the ordinary person’s perception of what food may be, given its intended purpose. Rather, it is the letter of the law that determines the relative foodness or non-foodness of any particular substance.

In closing then, I will note that the bill also provides, in clause 8(1)(b)(vii), that food is “anything that is declared by the Governor-General, by Order in Council made under section 355, to be food for the purposes of this Act;”, and thus chewing gum may be food but chewing tobacco may not, so must it be. These are splendid definitions and we support them entirely, as we support this bill. Thank you.

I am pleased to be able to speak in the Committee of the whole House stage of the Food Bill. Part 1 is pretty broad, and I think we need to visit a few aspects of it. I will just reflect on the broad level of agreement that has been arrived at in terms of this bill across Parliament. But in saying that, that does not mean that the Green Party is happy with all aspects of the bill—not just this issue of country-of-origin labelling but other aspects as well. But we think there has been a reasonable move to accept some of our concerns and to address them. In time, I would like to see further change to this bill. I referred to it last night that we actually do need a truly independent New Zealand Food Safety Authority—not just the one that we did have but something much more genuinely independent. This bill goes a long way, and it has been mentioned about the new part in the purpose clause, inserted by new clause 4 (ba), which is that the legislation will help “maintain confidence in New Zealand’s food safety regime;”. That is all about external trade, and that is obviously important, with agriculture being 54 percent of our export value. It is absolutely critical.

However, New Zealanders are being fed some very, very poor food. This bill could deal with that, but will not necessarily. The bill is full of mays and possibilities—the Minister may do this, or the Ministry for Primary Industries may do that. But what we actually need is some serious compliance. We need to be looking at what is in our food, who is measuring it, and how they are measuring it. I have been involved in this issue for many years—more than a decade—looking at issues around pesticides in food, genetically modified foods and how they are coming into the country, and antibiotic resistance and that. The bill can address them all, but so could the Food Act, and successive Governments have failed New Zealanders in the application of legislation and regulation to ensure the best food is going to them, their children, and, in fact, their unborn children as well. So I am looking forward to seeing very good and appropriate application to ensure that this bill works well once it is passed.

There has been a fair bit of talk on country-of-origin labelling, and I am sure we are going to address that several more times. I was just taking some notes when the Minister for Food Safety was talking. We have had some of these discussions before. I do not think it is right that we rely on the joint partnership, Minister. I have just been reflecting on it a little bit over the last hour or so. The joint partnership with Australia has some sense. We are a small country, Australia is a much bigger country, so let us work together on food standards. But what we are getting from them and what the Minister is unfortunately being advised about are not necessarily good outcomes for New Zealanders. I know that through and through on genetic engineering. I am not sure when I will do a speech on that through the course of what we are doing now, but I will.

💬 Ian McKelvie: Oh, dear!

And Ian McKelvie is waiting for that. I promise you, Ian, I will give it to you.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Order! The member must use the member’s full name and title.

OK—Ian McKelvie, I look forward to it. I aim to have that very, very much clarified—not his name but the issues around genetic modification and how the Minister almost has her arm being held up her back to rubber-stamp it because of the advice she has been given and these trade imperatives that seem to overrule food safety for New Zealand consumers.

Country-of-origin labelling comes into that turf to a degree too, and people want that. People want country-of-origin labelling for a range of reasons. Some of them are for food safety and their assumptions and ideas around the food safety that is achieved in various countries. But others will be for a range of reasons about how that food is produced. Is it produced by a big agrichemical company? It could be because a big rainforest has been slashed down and they do not want to get food that was produced in that sort of area. It could even be the parochial thing and that they want to look after New Zealand producers and make sure that their food is consumed first.

Reflecting on the pork industry, 45 percent of pork—and I think it is more than that now—consumed in New Zealand comes from overseas. But the voluntary scheme that the Minister has referred to is not dealing with that. What pork does anyone in this Chamber, any member, anyone who works in these buildings, or anyone in our communities see that is labelled with its country of origin, saying that it comes from Canada, or maybe China or Australia, or countries, in fact, that even have diseases, which we should not be importing from? There are a number of consumers who would say they do not want to contribute to that but who do not get the choice because, as it is, country-of-origin labelling is voluntary. There is nothing mandatory. What is the backstop to that? There is no enforcement, because it is voluntary. The only thing is that if a consumer can be absolutely sure that something is misrepresented, then they can go to the Commerce Commission through one of the trade Acts.

We do need mandatory country-of-origin labelling. I agree that the stuff through the trans-Tasman joint partnership stuff is maybe not the clearest or the best method or form of that country-of-origin labelling. The reason for that—and I agree with the Minister—is the level of complexity. That is why I think Supplementary Order Paper 449 in my name is slightly superior to Labour’s Supplementary Order Paper 440 in the name of Damien O’Connor, because that one is relying on that system. This has got three parts to it. Firstly, if it is imported, you actually label it with the country that it comes from. But then it has got this word “or”: or if you put a little bit of local stuff in there, you say “local and imported goods”, and it tells you nothing at that point. Or it goes on again, and you get a mix of imported products, but I might want to know the difference between Canada and Argentina, for a range of reasons and perceptions. It is a bit messy that way. So the Supplementary Order Paper I have put up is talking about single ingredients and very, very clear country-of-origin labelling there.

My Supplementary Order Paper goes further to also suggest a change in clause 4(e) to require regular monitoring and enforcement of food labelling requirements. There is a very good reason for that. The food labelling requirements that we have now—and GE is the one that I know so well—are not being enforced. The bill does have—and discussions with the Minister support this—some provisions that would suggest that there is a certain liability on the regulators to do that job. Maybe my Supplementary Order Paper is not needed. We certainly see it as pretty needed because that labelling that I was just talking about has not been enforced or even monitored since 2003. We are talking about 11 years since a certain labelling requirement, which is legally applicable, has even been monitored and enforced. Even if the Hon Damien O’Connor’s Supplementary Order Paper or my Supplementary Order Paper were to be agreed to—and I would really like the Minister to reconsider—

It is good to be able to stand and speak on the Food Bill. It is a hefty tome of a bill, and I guess that speaks to the time that it took to go through the Primary Production Committee and the 570-odd submissions that were presented to the committee in order to cover it. This bill was introduced on 26 May 2010. It was more than 2 years, in 2013, until it came back here, and now we are still going through it in the Committee stage. We support this bill. Labour believes this is a step forward and that it clarifies considerably the issues around food safety. As the Minister for Food Safety points out, and we completely agree with her, New Zealand should have the highest standards of food safety because our economy depends on it. The scare around botulism last year emphasised that a scare around that sort of issue can have an enormous impact on our ability to export and on the way that we are perceived across the world.

This bill, I think, successfully balances the need for safety, on the one hand, with the need to preserve at the same time our way life. We talked about the sausage sizzle and the earlier possible requirement in the bill for those things to be heavily regulated, and effectively regulated out of existence. I do not know how much campylobacter is spread through sausage sizzles, but I like the idea, on a Saturday morning, when I am going around the sports teams in my electorate, of picking up a breakfast snack from one of the charities that are around there in order to help them out. That is part of our way of life. So the fact that that has been balanced with the need for safety in our food is, I think, a step forward. The fact that small businesses will be able to save money on this in terms of their compliance costs is also a step forward.

When we look at the Food Bill, what it effectively does is to look more at the risk of what might happen in terms of handling food rather than at the actual businesses themselves that are affected. It looks at risk in terms of about five different areas. I just want to run through these very quickly, because they are in and around the purpose of the bill. They are the food control plans around the control of food; national programmes to be implemented for medium and low-risk food handling; food handler guidance, so those companies and others who will be handling food will be able to obtain guidance; monitoring, obviously, of those programmes, which is absolutely necessary; and also a much clearer requirement set out for the issue around food imports. Obviously, within that, when you have got monitoring, you are also going to have penalties, and the penalties are updated as well, as part of this lengthy tome. All in all, this has been a good piece of work, which has been done cooperatively across the select committee, with good input from officials, from what I understand, although I was not serving on the committee, and we have come up with a good piece of legislation that we are happy to support.

But I want to come to the point that Damien O’Connor and Steffan Browning were just mentioning before, which is the point about country of origin labelling. The Minister in the chair, Nikki Kaye, spoke to this, and I have to say that her reply or response to this was a bit unconvincing. She said that we do not actually need this because 70 percent of our single-ingredient foods are already being looked after voluntarily. The issue is not really about the 70 percent that are being done so voluntarily; the issue is about the 30 percent of those foods that are not being looked at and their country of origin not being submitted, because those are the ones that we have to worry about.

I give, as an example, walking into your local fish shop. When I walk into our local fish shop, my assumption up until fairly recently was that the fish in that shop were largely caught or harvested in New Zealand. I know that there are going to be certain standards. Actually, that is a long way from the truth. It is a long way from the truth. The cheaper pieces of fish are actually sourced from places like Viet Nam, where the fish are grown in ponds and fed hormones and a whole lot of other artificial products in order to grow them. They are brought to New Zealand and they are sold alongside New Zealand fish. I would like to see “Fish grown in Vietnam” clearly on the fish that we see in our fish shop, but we are not seeing that, because if you did that, probably nobody would buy it. They would go for the New Zealand fish. The voluntary code is simply not working in the way that I believe—and New Zealanders have a right to believe—that it should.

Then the Minister said that we can do it in another way rather than through this piece of legislation. As this is a comprehensive examination and regulation of our food industry in New Zealand, why would you not put that into something like this bill, in the form of a very simple Supplementary Order Paper, rather than try to do it through some other means? On the one hand the Minister is saying that we do not need labelling because 70 percent of it is already done, although the 30 percent that is not done is actually a real worry. On the other hand she said that if we do need it to be done—well, does it need to be done or not—we can do it in some other way, rather than this way. So the argument is very unconvincing. It is very unconvincing, and I believe that what we should be doing is moving through with these Supplementary Order Papers and getting them through Parliament. What we need is for Peter Dunne to sign off on them and we can actually do that—and I would hope that he will actually be coming to the Committee later on to be able to help with that—so that we are able to have country of origin labelling that is clear and well set out, for New Zealanders to see where their food is coming from.

It is very simple. I believe we have a right to that, and a right to enable that to happen. Although we have controversy elsewhere, and the Minister says they are looking into country of origin food labelling in Australia, let me just show you this chart here. People on television or anybody else might not be able to see this, but this long column down here represents the list of countries that do have country of origin labelling. They include all of the OECD countries that we trade with. This small group here is the countries that do not have country of origin labelling. There are about a dozen of them. We are in the company of Guatemala, Colombia, Honduras, Philippines, and Viet Nam. Good old New Zealand is with them. Well, if we are a food-exporting nation and we take food quality seriously, then we should be in the other column. We should not be on this side of the ledger, where countries are looking to us and asking why New Zealand cannot regulate its food industry in the same way that they can. So if these counties can do it, why can we not do it?

The Minister has been completely unconvincing in her argument that somehow it is not necessary because 70 percent of it is already done. Of course, in relation to the 30 percent that is not done, they are not doing it for the reason that it would discourage people from buying their products. Of course that is the case. So as a result of that, for 30 percent of the products that we are buying in our shops, nobody has any idea where they come from or what is actually inside them either. That is a whole other issue that I will bring up another day. I believe that although this is a good piece of legislation, the country of origin labelling is a serious omission from what is otherwise a very good piece of legislation that could have actually advanced us up the chart and put us on the on the right side of the ledger with all the other countries in the OECD, rather than languishing alongside Colombia, Honduras, and Viet Nam.

I move, That the question be now put.