Food Bill

We are now moving on to Part 3 of this very finely drafted bill, the Food Bill, which has had many years of input from officials, from Governments both on this side of the Chamber and the other side of the Chamber—some 10 years in the making—and with some very good contributions made at the Primary Production Committee to where we are today. We are on to Part 3, which concerns food imported for the purpose of sale, and, as we have mentioned in other parts, it is not only the food that we produce from the bounty of our land and our sea but also the imported food ingredients that form a vital part of our food industry and our food production.

I am just scanning my eye over Part 3 and I see here that at the end of Part 3 there are provisions relating to the Joint Border Management System, something that is very dear to the Customs Service and the Ministry for Primary Industries at the moment. It is a very comprehensive computer system, which will ultimately make ease of reporting and recording and facilitating the import and export of goods across the border. It is a major IT system roll-out and means that the businesses concerned have a single registration point whereby they can register and have a lot more ease of processing. Reporting paperwork is all eliminated through a computer-based system. Businesses can work through this Joint Border Management System and the key element to that is the Trade Single Window.

Clauses 122A and 122B feed into the Joint Border Management System. Clause 122A states: “Border information supplied using JBMS must be supplied in an approved form and manner”. Clause 122B states: “Duty to use JBMS to supply border information”. So it is good that this legislation aligns with that significant piece of information technology system, which is critical. We can have all the food production in this country that we want—and importation is really important—but it has to cross our borders, whether inbound or outbound, and we need to have ease of transacting of business for those companies that are involved so it ultimately reduces the red tape.

The Joint Border Management System is a key part of that, as mentioned in this Part 3. We know that there are issues around the implementation of that system. We are unsure as to whether an evaluation has taken place. The system has cost in excess of $90 million and we are still unsure about the effectiveness of that system and whether all aspects around the functionality of that system have been delivered by the IT contractor concerned. I do not mean to be straying off from this bill, but the Joint Border Management System is a central piece of the joint system between the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Customs Service. It is contained within this Part 3, and therefore I did feel obliged that I should make those few remarks around that system. But this bill does align with the IT systems.

It is good that there is now a coordination between food businesses and the importers that they will be dealing with, and the facilitation of the products that they will be using in their production of their end goods, which will ultimately be ending up in the pukus of us Kiwi consumers and also our customers in international markets around the world. As I mentioned, our food sector is the most important economic sector in terms of the value that it creates for our country.

As I said before on the Food Bill, I would like to speak on the GE food process, because absolutely all genetically engineered food in New Zealand is imported. We do not grow any—and that is a very good position—and there is a need for enforcement and independent advice. First of all, if an applicant, generally a big agrichemical company like Monsanto, Dow, or Dupont, wants to introduce something into the food chain here, the authority is Food Standards Australia New Zealand, and there are variants around that through our joint partnership arrangement. If the company wants to do that, it applies to Food Standards Australia New Zealand, say, and then a notification is sent out after Food Standards Australia New Zealand has done an administrative assessment. It prepares what it says is a safety and nutrition assessment, but I can assure you that it has very, very limited information when it does that and it bases it on some very crude assumptions.

Food Standards Australia New Zealand publishes that assessment report for public consultation. It includes whatever safety and other data is provided. It is fairly complex in the technicalities but very, very low on the genuine safety appraisals. Then the public are invited to make submissions on that assessment. That is it. The public of New Zealand, through this process, get one chance of submitting on an issue that is dear to their food health and safety. There is just the one chance. The Ministry for Primary Industries makes submissions to Food Standards Australia New Zealand and it also gets what it calls an independent review by the National Institute of Environmental Science and Research on available information only. Then Food Standards Australia New Zealand considers the public submissions and puts out an approval report. That is signed off by the Food Standards Australia New Zealand board.

Then it comes down to the next part, the Legislative and Governance Forum on Food Regulation. That is where our current Minister for Food Safety, Nikki Kaye, is, as were other food safety Ministers in the past. There was another name for this part, but it is now called the Legislative and Governance Forum on Food Regulation. The forum gets an opportunity at that point to either accept or seek a review of what Food Standards Australia New Zealand has put before it. Let me just spell out that there are 10 Ministers on that forum. Our Minister, our New Zealand Minister for Food Safety, is one of the 10, because Australia has got various federal—

💬 Tim Macindoe: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Part 3 of this bill is a very small part and this member is not addressing his comments to any aspect of Part 3.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Well, I have the bill in front of me and I am looking at clause 122A, which talks about border information. I have sought some advice, but I just ask the member in his comments on Part 3 to be more succinct.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Part 3 is all about imported food. It is not about any domestically arranged food; it is all about imported food. Ministers can accept it or seek a review, and they have done that a couple of times. The food is ultimately always accepted. It has never not been ultimately accepted. It gets gazetted in Australia, then it goes to the Ministry for Primary Industries for an amendment, and then it goes through and gets gazetted into New Zealand law. It gets put into the New Zealand food chain if it is available. So in Part 3 we are talking about who can actually import food, how they are registered, how they will comply, and how they can be deregistered. Only certain people can do that. It is good that we are going to have a better overview on food that is imported, but I do want to go through that process on how the decisions are made for that particular food, on how that process goes.

I just mentioned that New Zealanders, and Australians for that matter, have only one possibility. I do want to give an analogy on this. I know this is Part 3 but I need to show where that process is not fair.

💬 Tim Macindoe: Which clause is the member referring to?

I will open it up again for you. I question the questioner as to what the concern is on having this spelt out. It needs to be spelt out. We have got the Food Bill in front of us.

💬 Tim Macindoe: What’s the relevant section?

It is about importers. I am saying that this is a totally imported food. New Zealanders have only one opportunity to submit on this imported food. Then you ask: “Can they actually appeal it? Can they complain about it?”. The only possibility is to complain to our Regulations Review Committee to say that this should not have been imported. It should not have been approved. But the Regulations Review Committee, when it has gone through a comprehensive look at it, has said: “No, we cannot uphold the complaint because Food Standards Australia New Zealand has ticked all the boxes.” At that point all a New Zealander, an organisation, or anyone can do is go to the High Court for a judicial review, and, yet, this stuff is not fit for purpose because it has not been appraised properly or independently.

Will we administer this bill—and this might be a way that the Minister can do it—by saying that these importers cannot import this food? You may feel compelled to gazette it and tick it through as suitable, but I think you need to find a way of stopping it coming into the food chain. There is more on that and I will do that in Part 5, which may be the better part to finish this in. I will not be able to complete it in this section. Thank you.

Part 3 of the Food Bill, as speakers have said previously, relates to food imported for the purpose of sale. On reading through all the clauses here, they basically refer to administration and administrative requirements. Not much of it actually refers to the food itself. It perhaps is part of the design, but given the absence of country-of-origin labelling the assumption will be that when the food comes into the country it is safe. Nothing in Part 3 specifies that clearly. The person importing the food can be suspended, or have their licence suspended, if the food imported by the importer may pose a risk to human life or public health, or there has been serious failure of the operations, or there have been other matters that cast doubt on the safety and suitability of the food. That is in clause 113(1)(a) and (b). That is almost the sole reference to the food itself. The rest of the provisions here relate to the registration of individuals and what they must do, the chief executive’s requirements around that, their ability to refuse to register, etc. Let us come back to the heart of the matter, and that is imported food. Is it safe? We as a country export food, and all the growers, all the people involved, have to meet very high standards to export food from this country. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for all other countries importing food from us or exporting food to us, so we are reliant on systems. We have some authority within our own country, but have very little authority in other countries to ensure that their systems are robust. There are big issues around biosecurity, none of which are referenced in this particular part of the Food Bill. The Ministers may say that that is not necessary. I, however, think that it is, and while the committee has kicked these things around, there are still questions. I do not think any piece of legislation is perfect. We are learning every single day in this area of trade and its importance to us. We import things like pork from Canada, where the porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome is endemic. There is a real risk of biosecurity, not direct food safety as such, but it certainly does affect, or has the potential to affect, our food systems in this country because the syndrome leads to ill-health in pigs and that inevitably leads to, at times, the slaughter of animals that are not appropriate for human consumption. When importing pork from Canada we have to trust their system to deliver us pork from healthy pigs. That is an issue of trust, and one that is not always delivered on, I have to say, from other countries. Garlic, for example—we import garlic, believe it or not, bizarre as it is. An onion fly was found in a garlic clove in a house in Nelson. It is a real pest for this country. Obviously it has come in in larvae form and was part of a biosecurity risk, but it did question the systems of delivering to us as an importing country, safe, healthy, and certified food. It was supposed to be certified as clear of all biosecurity risks, just as it would have to be certified as healthy food. If there is a systems failure for one thing, there can be systems failures for other things. We import a huge amount of meat into this country—a lot of it through Progressive Enterprises, the Australian supermarket chain, I have to say; Countdown and the like. They are importing meat out of Australia. We assume that it is safe meat, although the Australians have been known before to export kangaroo meat as beef. Although I do not want to challenge the Australians directly, there are other countries exporting food to us and I think we need to double-check their systems. The ability, in Part 3 of the bill, for the director-general to cease registration of any importing body, company, or individual is essential. The chief executive may do that. But I hope that the powers that we have offered through this part of the bill are extensive enough to say to someone—where, for example, the garlic imported into this country delivered a real biosecurity risk—that that allows us to go back to that importer and to cease imports immediately, until the importer can prove that their systems are robust. I have to say that we have, as the Opposition, challenged the Minister to halt imports where we have identified biosecurity risks. The Government has been reluctant to do that. They say: “Oh no. Things are OK. We don’t want to upset our trade people and our negotiations.” Well, sometimes we are going to have to harden up. Sometimes we are going to have to make a call and suspend an importer’s licence immediately if we think there is a biosecurity risk or, in this case here, a food safety risk. We have been reluctant to do that as a country. We have been reluctant, and I think we have to take a tougher stance in this area. As I say, country-of-origin labelling would better enable consumers to identify that food that is imported and in their minds might carry a higher risk than the food that is produced in New Zealand, which we believe should be of lower risk, particularly in the area of food safety. We pride ourselves in our systems, but the Government is not prepared to—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member, but the time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

We are speaking on Part 3 of the Food Bill in relation to food imported for the purpose of sale. This, I guess, refers to the growing amount of food that we are importing into this country, which many Kiwis think is quite bizarre, really, given that we produce some of the finest and safest food in the world. But we do have our borders open so that we can then reciprocate and export our food to those countries. So making sure that we have a good system in place is important. The Primary Production Committee has looked at all the issues here and has intended, through its changes and improvements, I guess, to have a fair system that allows people to bring in food. But the specific references here are to systems that we hope are robust and that we trust are being met and implemented when people put up their plan to import food. We want their assurances that it will be safe food and, ultimately, that there is a check in the country of origin that the food has indeed been produced in a safe way.

I made reference to the importation of particular products like pork, for example, out of Canada, where the Government has been in a legal battle for some time with the Pork Industry Board. It has spent probably close to $1 million trying to defend its right to challenge the changing import health standards that relate primarily to biosecurity but indirectly to the possibility that pork in that country, because of disease, has been produced from pigs that are not entirely healthy. We have to rely on the systems in Canada to deliver that pork to the border and trust that everything has met the basic requirements. We probably can have some confidence that in a country like Canada that has occurred, but there are many other countries from which we import food where I am not sure we could be quite as confident. So these provisions place a duty on the importer to make sure that all the applicable requirements of the Act are met. It allows the chief executive of the Ministry for Primary Industries, or, in the case of the new Labour Government, of the food safety authority that we will form and set up once again, to cancel the registration of any importer who does not meet the basic requirements. There are in clause 113 mandatory suspension provisions that relate directly to the food and its risk to human life or public health. But, other than that, all the other provisions in Part 2 relate to systems and an obligation for the importer to meet those systems.

I move, That the question be now put.