Food Bill

We now move to Part 2. This is debate on clauses 19 to 96 and schedules 1 to 4.

Part 2 of the Food Bill refers to risk-based measures. I guess, in summary, it is appropriate standards for appropriate risk—the volume and type of food, where the foods are sold, and what kind of system, I guess, the company, in the most part, can afford to run. I have to say that these things have been kicked around for some time by select committees and by the Minister for Food Safety, and I think we have got the balance about right.

But what I am concerned about is the Minister’s statement earlier on about the savings that this bill would create for the industry. The Government has been very good at working on costs, but not on value. This is a piece of legislation that affects, arguably, the single biggest part of our income generation across the economy, both at the primary level, in terms of animal production and food, and also at the secondary and tertiary level—that is, manufacturing, and then the sale at retail. So it is a very important piece of legislation.

The cost savings, which the Minister claims are around $40 million, may be there. In my view, they are a lesser part of our consideration than the value that we may assist to create for the food industry and for the primary sector. So I would like to think that we are assisting in the establishment of a system of integrity—a robust system of integrity—that allows anyone producing primary produce, or food or whatever, in this country to get out there and sell with confidence that at every part of the supply chain we have avoided any possible contamination, we have not allowed an infiltration by anyone or anything, and we have got food that is true to label—in spite of us not having country-of-origin labelling—and that what is said on the pack will, indeed, be what the consumer buys and the person eats and consumes. That is very, very important. So the risk-based measures, the systems put in place to work through every part of possible systems breakdown or contamination, are really, really important.

There have been concerns, of course, about over-regulation. The Primary Production Committee has moved on a couple of occasions—with the assistance of the Minister, who has clarified a few things—to, hopefully, not over-regulate, and perhaps that is where the Minister is pointing to the possible savings. The reality is that most of the laws that we pass in this House are for the people who are potentially going to break them, not for the vast majority of people, who understand the wisdom of running a system that delivers safe food.

There will always be people who want to cut corners. There will always be people who want to mislabel or to put in horsemeat when beef is what the food is labelled as. There are numerous examples across the world of inappropriate labelling—effectively, fraudulent operations—to the point where in the UK now, and in the European Union, there are major inquiries around the counterfeiting of food. Gangs are moving from drugs to food. So let us not underestimate the risks that we are talking about here.

Although the Minister may be focused on reducing costs, we in the Opposition are more focused on having a robust piece of legislation that actually prevents this kind of counterfeiting and fraudulent behaviour. So that is the approach that we have taken to this. We have not looked at each and every clause through Part 2 of the bill and said: “Well, this is going to save a bit for people here and there.”, and, in fact, at the same time we are doing this, in the meat industry, for example, the Minister is allowing the dumbing down and the deregulation of meat inspection. So, on the one hand, we are, hopefully, moving to a comprehensive piece of legislation that has appropriate risk-based measures in it, but, on the other hand, the Government has been moving in the wrong direction.

Although it is not a specific part of this, what happens in the slaughterhouse, and what happens at every part of food manufacture, will have to be identified in the food control plans that are currently covered by this area. Also, of course, in Part 2 we have how we develop the food control plans, how we oversee them, how we register them, what are the national programmes, and how we deal with, I guess, the monitoring, of course, which is really, really important.

Can I go back to the point I raised in relation to Part 1 that an independent food safety authority, which this Government got rid of, is going to be an essential component to any robust system as we move forward. Just as the Chinese were confused, when it came to the botulism debacle, about whom they should speak to and whether we had a food safety authority—in fact, going back to the meat issue, they demanded certification from the Food Safety Authority, the old agency, because they did not trust the Ministry for Primary Industries.

The point is that the implementation, the oversight, and the enforcement of all these risk-based measures should be carried out under the control of an independent food safety authority. We in Government will reinstate that independent agency. There are numerous examples now of the Ministry for Primary Industries not having the appropriate focus or expertise—with all due respect to its officials—or independence to focus solely on food safety. It is compromised by considerations of trade, of biosecurity in some instances, in other areas of responsibility across the Ministry for Primary Industries. If we are to have the risk-based measures upheld, adjusted where necessary, and implemented, we need a separate food safety authority.

Without getting into the details—the Minister might want to go through the details; there are quite a few in here. I do not think anyone in the gallery would want me to read through these things. In principle we believe it is appropriate to have risk-based measures at the level needed to ensure food safety but not at a level that undermines the ability for food producers to innovate, to create, and to get out and deliver new products to the market place.

We have got to get the right balance. In the select committee we hope we have. But without an independent food safety authority we cannot guarantee that all our good work here is going to be carried through and will deliver an absolute assurance of food safety for our consumers. So that is something we have to continue to work on.

Part 2 of the Food Bill, with the risk-based approach, is the piece of the bill that we very much support. That is the part of the modernisation that was envisaged back something like 11 years ago when this bill was first raised. Of course, when the bill first came there were some parts in it that looked particularly Draconian and that seriously concerned a lot of people. A lot of small producers thought they would automatically be going out of business when this bill was implemented, and that they would have to go into levels of bureaucracy, I will call it, that currently they did not, and they could see lots and lots of expenses coming from that. There are still concerns about that. There are concerns for some processors, particularly—rather than, say, fruit and vegetable producers, but more the people processing cheeses and the like. We had very good submissions on that from people who are anxious that their costs will come down, as the Minister for Food Safety has outlined, and they will be able to carry on their business in a very good way.

One of the changes, though, that was put through that we are very happy about is the inclusion of a good Samaritan clause to allow people to keep donating food to those in need. There are organisations—and there is a great one in Wellington here called Kaibosh, which was a submitter—that go around and pick up food that at the end of the day a supermarket, café, or restaurant will not be running through to the next day, but that food is still healthy or certainly viable and safe food. I am not sure about healthy, as a lot of them might be sweet treats. Those organisations are able, through this clause, to carry on with that without having to go into some sort of compliance level that would prevent them doing that. So that is fantastic.

Swapping food over the fence was another area that really, really concerned people. You could read into the bill the way it was that that might actually be a transaction. It could be under bartering, and, of course, barter, according to the Inland Revenue Department is a sale, and it should be because we can barter some pretty big things that would be effectively avoiding tax and the like. That was teased out and there was a solution to that. People in the community—through their families, over the fence, down the road, and at the community gardens—could do that swapping. Seeds, as was outlined earlier, might get caught up in it. That was sorted out.

What we will be needing now is some very good work with the Minister around the point of exemptions from these different tiers of approaches to risk, and she has agreed to meet to try to do that. I think the tiers are great and that the different schedules we will get into later reflect those tiers of risk. However, the smallest producers do not need to be incorporated into that. I did suggest through the select committee process that for the smallest ones there should be an affidavit system, and maybe through the regulation we can still do that. For the smallest ones, actually sign an affidavit to say that they do understand food safety issues and they know about washing their hands and making sure certain contaminants do not go near the food, and, potentially, under a certain level of production, they will not have to go into a situation where they would say “Blow it. I’m out of here. I’m not going to carry on this business.” We would be all the poorer if they did not. To have those extra safeguards put into the bill allows for the scale of the enterprise—so the Fonterras, the peanut butter manufacturers, or whatever—to be treated differently from somebody growing a few lettuces or picking a few apricots and wanting to sell but not being able to afford the compliance costs.

There will be ways of achieving that. It could go the other way and it will depend on the people implementing it. A lot of the fears were driven by video clips and the like of activities in the US where food safety officers were going into businesses in a fairly heavy-handed way and appeared to be driving some people out of business. So it is, I think, an achievement that we all did come to common agreement. Some of us actually visited some of the producers at their homes or at their points of business, and I know that members from both sides of the Committee met one of the cheese makers and saw what the real situation was for them.

💬 Ian McKelvie: What’s the cow’s name, Steffan?

Pardon?

💬 Ian McKelvie: What’s the cow’s name?

Well, one of them will be called Daisy, would it not? I am not sure. But this was someone with just three or four cows, who was making a handcrafted cheese. Seriously, think of their production and the total turnover of $20,000, and yet they end up with compliance fees of thousands of dollars. So, clearly, that was not about $20,000 of profit; that was turnover. So it was absolutely critical. Some of that is not caught up in the Food Bill because it is under the animal products regimes, too. So there is some crossover there that I know the Minister and all sides of the Committee will want to sort out in time to make sure there is good harmony and that we can make some good progress.

There are other parts of the bill that I would like to speak to particularly, and I hopefully will not be cut short because I had more to debate on Part 1. I am hoping that when we get into some other parts that we will have the debate in full rather than it being cut short, because I do have something I need to outline around genetic engineering, which does not quite fit with this risk-management part that is around the production of food in New Zealand. I am pleased to say that no one is legally able to produce food that is genetically engineered in New Zealand at this time. So it does not actually need to be outlined in the risk-management strata that are in Part 2. The Greens are happy to support this aspect of the bill.

I am pleased to speak on Part 2 of the Food Bill. This is really the guts, some of the core provisions, in terms of the new risk management approach under the Food Bill. We know what those measures are. As the Minister for Food Safety explained earlier, there is a sliding scale of measures that food businesses will have to comply with, based on whether they are high risk and the types of foods they produce. At its most fundamental level, there are the food control plans, of which there are two types. There is the template plan, which I am sure will be very helpful for those particular industries that fall within that category, right through to individualised plans. Then it cascades through to other measures, such as the national programmes and monitor programmes, and a lot of that detail will be implemented by way of regulations once the Act has come into force.

But I want to focus on the most very basic level. This is not even about just food businesses. It is around the food handler guidance that is also promoted through this legislation. This piece of legislation impacts on all food businesses, but it also applies especially to Māori and maraes. I know that maraes are the heartbeat of the hapū, of the particular community or hapū or whānau that they represent. They are the actual engine room of the marae complex. It is not actually the big house. It is not actually the whare tūpuna. The actual engine room of the marae is the wharekai, the dining room, because from that wharekai emanate all of the orders that go around to all the different parts of the marae, including the big house. So when kai is served, those orders go out, and they have to listen to the cooks in the kitchen.

In terms of the way that the marae operates, this bill does have potential implications, because a lot of maraes around the country do have aspirations to trade in food. They do have aspirations to, perhaps, set up cafés or restaurants—

💬 Shane Ardern: This bill will help them. This will help them.

—and this bill definitely will help. At its most basic level there is the Te Kai Manawa Ora programme, which has been promoted by the former Food Safety Authority. It is a very sensible programme that provides good guidance to marae in terms of proper food handling. With a lot of it, especially when you talk to your old aunties, they will get quite offended if you tell them what food handling standards or food safety standards are. They have been doing it mai rā nō, as we say—for a long, long time. But it is good that these measures are being promoted to Māori and that there is the pathway that they can follow to, indeed, become businesses that trade in food and that comply with the relevant food control plan.

This is a good part. This is the guts of the legislation. It is about risk management, as opposed to, as I mentioned earlier, the old hygiene regulations, which were more worried about the fixtures and the fittings and what was on the walls and what was on the floors and what was up in the air ducts. All of those are basically irrelevant with the passing of this legislation, because everything will be based around the whole process of the handling of the kai, the food—right through its production to the end product and, ultimately, the consumer.

As I mentioned, the wharekai is the engine room of the marae. As Māori we know that the mana of the hapū, of the whānau, is very much determined by the quality of the food and of the feast that is put on for the guests. It is very exciting for our kuias and our ringaweras around the motu. There are hundreds of marae. We know that there are many food businesses, but, equally, there are hundreds of marae around the country with their caterers in the kitchen that will be covered within the ambit of this legislation. We know how important it is, because the mana of the marae is based on the quality of the kai, and the worst thing that could happen to any marae would be if the manuhiri got crook after eating the hākari. Unfortunately, I have been the victim of such an occurrence, but I will not name the marae. I will not name anywhere even close to where it is—the geographic proximity. But I can tell you that it was not pleasant for me and for many other whānau who attended that particular hui.

That is the very reason why we need to have this legislation in place. We need to have this legislation, which provides the full gambit of all food suppliers, food businesses, and food purveyors right across the country, from all levels, working under a much more user-friendly food safety risk management - based framework. That applies, as I have mentioned, right from the marae wharekai through to the coffee cart through to the cottage cheese-maker and right through to the big industrial export processor.

I did want to touch on the fact that the food sector, in general, is critically important to the economy of our country. I cannot stress that enough. Māori, in particular, are major stakeholders in the food production sectors of our country. We need to look only at the agribusiness sector, sheep and beef, dairy production, seafood, fisheries, aquaculture, horticulture, viticulture—you name it; Māori are major players. There are many, many successful industry-leading organisations around the country that are doing wonderful things in terms of producing food, employing people in the regions, and earning good foreign exchange dollars through the exports of their fine produce. So it is great that this legislation can be in place so that they have a much more user-friendly regime to be able to work under. Ultimately, that will see the increase in export returns and the increase in the standard of living that we want across all of the country.

It is vitally important for Māori, but we know that there are many, many hundreds, if not thousands, of food premises and food businesses, and there are many, many people who rely on the food industry for employment. Likewise, it is significant that half of our export returns as a country come from food production and food exports. So this is a very, very significant piece of legislation. It has taken a long time to get to this point, but, as I mentioned yesterday, good things take time, as the Mainland cheese ad said. But it is true that this is a very, very good measure in Part 2. Having the sliding scale and the range of different plans means that businesses will have certainty that they know they operate under, or a means by which that can be determined. That is really the central aspect to the risk management approach. I commend Part 2. Kia ora.

I move, That the question be now put.