Food Safety Law Reform Bill

I move, That the Food Safety Law Reform Bill be now read a second time. The bill addresses the recommendations from the Government Inquiry into the Whey Protein Concentrate Contamination Incident, which required legislative change. The bill was referred to the Primary Production Committee in August 2016 and was reported back to this House in December 2016. We sincerely thank the members of the Primary Production Committee, and particularly the chair, Ian McKelvie, for their thorough consideration of this bill. We also acknowledge the valuable input from both written and oral submitters and the considerable support the bill received from key industry stakeholders.

To recap a little of the history of this bill, the Fonterra botulism scare had a major impact on New Zealand’s food safety reputation both domestically and internationally. The Government accepted all 38 recommendations made by the whey protein concentrate (WPC) inquiry into this incident. Most of the inquiry’s recommendations have been, or are being, implemented through operational means. The bill addresses that these recommendations need statutory change before they can be implemented.

The bill amends the three main food safety Acts: the Food Act, the Wine Act, and the Animal Products Act so that improvements stipulated by the WPC inquiry, and other enhancements, can also be made across the food safety system. The main areas the bill amends relate to incident responses where we are making sure that the Ministry for Primary Industries can ask the people who provide services to food businesses for information during a serious food incident.

We are also allowing privileged statements to inform as well as protect the public, setting requirements for tracing and recalling foods, and ensuring that the statutory role in contingency planning of the Ministry for Primary Industries is clear.

There are risk management plans and programmes where we are requiring more information to be supplied when a programme is submitted for registration, and we require that all food safety obligations are clearly identified in these programmes.

There is harmonisation of enforcement tools. The tools in the new Food Act will now be available under the Animal Products Act and the Wine Act. This will mean that similar offending can be treated in a similar manner across the food system. There is the ability to make regulations in certain areas—for example, to require any operators to get formal verification checks that they are meeting their obligations, and to require testing of procedures for tracing and recalling food.

There is the design of delegated legislation, which then requires duplication so that the empowering provisions are set at the right level of delegation. This will mean that more of the obligations on operators will be set in regulations, rather than notices.

The bill also makes enhancements to the wider regime, such as allowing for the use of automated electronic systems that will improve the efficiency of interactions with operators and overseas trading partners. Additionally, the opportunity is taken to make some minor and technical amendments that generally tidy up and clarify some interpretive issues and help the entire system to function smoothly.

The Primary Production Committee has recommended that the bill proceed with a few revisions. We support all the changes recommended by the committee. As recommended by the Regulations Review Committee, the bill now has a fall-back date for two provisions that would have delayed commencement. This will ensure the regulations provided for in the bill will be made promptly within 2 years of the bill’s enactment, providing certainty for business about any new requirements in a timely manner.

The Animal Products Act and the Wine Act allow regulations to provide an exemption from the payment of certain levies. This exemption can be used in situations when the levy to be charged would be unfair, such as when a charging mistake had occurred.

The Regulations Review Committee advised that expiry dates should be set for exemptions if possible. The Primary Production Committee therefore recommends that as a legal safeguard these two exemption clauses should be amended to set an expiry date of no later than 5 years from the granting of the exception.

The WPC inquiry was concerned about the regulators’ access to risk management information held by food business operators. Our policy to address this has several strands, including removing the ability for operators to supply only an outline of their risk management plans and programmes to the regulator for registration. Another part of the policy was to require operators to send full copies of their plans and all amendments to their verifiers. Verifiers would be required to store these so that there would always be in immediate access to the most up-to-date version of the programme. However, industry submitters were concerned at the likely compliance costs for operators for this requirement. There was also concern about verification agencies having to hold and store up-to-date versions of the plans and programmes, because this would generate costs, for example, in IT systems, that would likely be passed on to operators.

The Primary Production Committee recommended removing these requirements, because it considered the food safety benefits would not justify the probable compliance costs. The law currently requires operators to supply full plans and programmes to the Ministry for Primary Industries within 48 hours on request, and we consider this as an adequate source of information that is available quickly when needed. These provisions in the original bill have now been removed. However, other provisions relating to improving access to risk management information remain in the bill. Coupled with existing law, we are confident that these improvements will address the issue the WPC inquiry considered.

The bill amends some additional regulation-making powers—for example, to regulations to set traceability requirements. The Primary Production Committee recommends, for the avoidance of doubt, that the bill clarifies that consultation must occur on all proposed regulations and supplementary notices under the new powers. We agree, and this change has also been made.

These and other minor and technical amendments agreed by the committee reflect a balanced and careful consideration of the range of comments received from submitters and enhance the bill. I commend the Food Safety Law Reform Bill to the House.

Most of the country, probably, will underestimate the importance of this piece of legislation. We are a country that is still entirely dependent, for our economy, on the production of food. It used to be considered that we produce wool and meat and milk, but, as was widely accepted at the Fieldays, and in a number of forums, New Zealand is in the business of producing food. It must be the finest food for the world’s most discerning customers, in my view, because it will always cost them a bit more to buy quality food from New Zealand. So we have got to produce food that is indeed up to expectations.

We have, through history, had a very proud record of food safety, but, I am sad to say—through the new pressures of market forces, opportunism, and commercial pressures and through a Government that, when it came in, of course, cut taxes, tried to squeeze government, and in some areas undermined the expertise, the professionalism, and the capability of New Zealand officials. One area was food safety, and without going back to identify all of the issues that we have had—of course, the whey protein concentrate inquiry was one that exposed a number of major problems. Fonterra, our largest single company and one that is still owned, for the most part, by New Zealanders—a company we should be very proud of—made a mistake. Indeed, no matter how big or small you are, mistakes will occur. But it relied on Government agencies to, firstly, test, and then verify some of the samples that went through from a problem they had identified. That is where it all went wrong, and because the Government had not invested in the proper areas of regulation and testing—in fact, we got caught out big time.

When we talk of costs, I do not think we have been able to assess the true cost of this to New Zealand. It is in the hundreds of millions of dollars because, for too long—and it was not a period of months, but for a number of days and weeks—people thought that we were producing food that could be contaminated with botulism. That is indeed a serious threat, I guess, to our food safety reputation. Thankfully, that was not the case, but what we did is we failed in a number of areas—particularly the Government agencies failed in a number areas when they should have been able to reassure Fonterra, when a mistake had occurred, of that while it had to rectify that it had indeed not done anything that would have put New Zealand’s reputation at risk. AsureQuality and AgResearch, in my view, failed because the National Government had not maintained their capability or brought them up to the speed that is necessary to uphold our international reputation. So what we have now is a piece of legislation that we hope will improve the regime, make it more robust, and prevent any mistakes like this happening in the future.

The reality is that if the Government continues to underfund these important areas—it claims we have growth in the economy, it claims we have growth in exports, and it claims we have growth in imports and net value to New Zealand, but what is not always occurring is an increase in the level of investment required to run proper verification and testing regimes. There is some additional money going to AgResearch and AsureQuality, but it is not at the same proportion as the growth in our economic activity. I put to the Government, because Labour supports this legislation, the qualification that there has to be proper investment in these areas of oversight. The naive belief that the National Government has always had is that, well, the market will sort this out. If we have got rogue players or people who have a lesser standard, then, you know, they will not last long. We as a country, and the agribusiness sector, are driven by the lowest common denominator. Our reputation is based on the poorest performance of any exporter from our country, not that of the highest performer.

So we need systems in place. We need regulations that ensure that the poorest performer exceeds the expectations of the customers in the market place. That is around food safety, absolutely, and it is around food quality. So we hope that the passage of this legislation, in supporting it through, will indeed support that reality, I guess, as we move into the future.

There are a few requirements. The Minister for Primary Industries has referred to some of them—new requirements for risk-based plans and programmes. The Primary Production Committee has thoroughly canvassed all of these issues and, I think, made some adjustments that, in general, we think will improve it. Acknowledging the chair of the Primary Production Committee over there, Mr Ian McKelvie—I think he managed a very good process, and I think we have done well. However, one of the things that did occur was that in all of this kind of upgrading of regulation, we are at risk of, I guess, killing the golden goose—strangling innovation in New Zealand in some small areas of food production where we are seeing true innovation and growth. I refer to a submitter who has come to the select committee on at least two occasions, I think, on food safety issues, Biddy Fraser-Davies, a small cheese producer who is doing some innovative things, who wants to continue, and who is providing inspiration for other small artisan cheesemakers. Her concern is that we do not put in place regulations and requirements and food plans that simply stifle her out of existence.

Trying to find that balance was something that the select committee, I think, endeavoured to do, and I think we got the balance about right, although I will put on notice that Labour, in Government, will undertake a programme to ensure a food safety regime that is practical and affordable to small, artisan, and innovative food producers in this country. We need that. While this is about tidying up the regime for Fonterra, we cannot expect the smallest player—keeping in mind that their standards must not be lowered at all, but the way that they meet those standards, and the verification of that, simply cannot be unaffordable, which is the reality that many of these people are facing at the moment.

Stronger verification, stronger enforcement, traceability, and recall regulations—I think everyone in the food sector, Fonterra in particular, have upped their game in this area. Fonterra now talks of the ability to actually, through DNA analysis, trace milk right back to a particular farm. I think that is what the market is now expecting. We have got in the marketplace—in spite of attempts to deny this reality—the ability now in marketing single farm - sourced milk for consumers. I think that when we roll that out around the world, we will be stepping up and getting more value for our produce.

Can I just say that Labour does welcome this legislation in through the House. It has been a long time in coming, but, you know, good things take time. I trust the select committee has got the balance right—that is, around regulations, certification, and requirements, but again always leaving the door open for innovative New Zealand food producers to get out there, to test the local market, and maybe to investigate the possibility of getting into the export market.

New Zealand depends upon primary production. We are food producers to the world—not to the whole world, but to about 40 million or 50 million people. We need our reputation to be upheld. The passage of this legislation, off the back of the lessons learnt by Fonterra’s unfortunate incident with WPC80 and the mistakes made by two key Government agencies—we are moving to improve that. I think we can assure the world that these mistakes should not occur again, as long as the Government properly resources the agencies that must always keep proper oversight on food production in this country.

Just in the few words I am going to say about the Food Safety Law Reform Bill, I want firstly to commend the Hon Jo Goodhew, who brought the legislation to the Primary Production Committee, and the reasons for that have been well canvassed. I also commend Minister David Bennett, who is now handling this piece of legislation.

The select committee process, which is what I will talk about in the short time I will be making a contribution to this—[Interruption] It is quite noisy. It is a bit like being in a chook run, is it not? I am sure this legislation applies to the chook run as well. This short contribution I will make on the select committee stage—it was a very interesting select committee process, because we had a large number of submissions, some 30-odd, that really were not on song, I guess, with the intention of the legislation, but none the less they were very interesting for the select committee. They dealt with things like food labelling, pesticide testing, compliance costs, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and all sorts of things. The compliance costs were the critical thing, and the previous speaker, Damien O’Connor, mentioned those.

We ran almost a joint select committee process, I guess, with the officials. We ended up with some substantive changes. One that created a great deal of discussion was removing the requirement for operators to send full copies of their risk-based plans, along with all amendments, to the verifiers. There was a great deal discussion in the select committee around what the select committee felt, or some members of the select committee felt, was some risk involved in this. We eventually got our way through that, because in fact these companies that are responsible for their own food safety have a very good record in this stuff.

I guess the key thing was that the Ministry for Primary Industries or whoever was reacting to any kind of a food safety risk was able to access that information very quickly. The key to a lot of the discussion that we had in the select committee was about ensuring that the person responsible was accessible to the officials and that the company had all the information required to very quickly get to the core of any problem that may arise in the future. That created quite a lot of discussion in the select committee, and we eventually got to a consensus on that. There were a number of other issues that the select committee dealt with, but, as Minister Bennett said in his words earlier on, on this topic, they were all resolved in a satisfactory manner. I think the select committee process worked pretty well in that respect.

The real interest in this for us, I think, as a country is that food safety is probably the No. 1 issue when it comes to protecting our export markets. I think the previous speaker again alluded to this. If we are not seen to be the best operators in the world, then we are certainly not going to have the same access to our markets in the future. Wherever you go in the world and talk about New Zealand exports and New Zealand food, food safety is absolutely the key, I think, to drive all of that.

The changes to this legislation, as a result of the whey concentrate scare, I think will secure New Zealand’s future to a much greater extent than we have in the past. We are now passing legislation around food safety at a rate that is commensurate, really, with the demands of the world. It will be very hard to keep up with those demands for food security as we move forward, and for food safety, because food security and food safety are slightly different things. So it is really important that we get this right and continue to get it right in the future.

I want to very briefly talk about a couple of things that arose that were not relevant to this bill necessarily. They relate to country-of-origin labelling, and, of course, the Primary Production Committee has a bill in front of it now relating to this. But there was a lot of talk about that by submitters. The other issue that there was a lot of talk about was the costs of compliance and the risk that we face, I think, with the costs of compliance around the potential for innovation in the food industry. Almost all of our major products in New Zealand have originally come out of a garage-type operation, and it is pretty important that we enable that to continue.

I am not going to take any more time on the second reading of this bill. I want to commend it to the House. I thank the select committee for the work on it, right across the House, and I hope this bill makes good progress through the House. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. I would like to add my support to the second reading of this Food Safety Law Reform Bill. Can I congratulate the newly appointed Minister David Bennett on the great gravitas with which he delivered his speech, and the good work of the Primary Production Committee, led by our chair Mr McKelvie. It is a shame about our deputy chair, but that is another matter. We are a hard-working committee, and we did give plenty of consideration to this bill.

As my colleague Mr O’Connor mentioned, this is a very important bill—a very important bill. Our food safety system is paramount and is absolutely integral to us as an export-producing nation. We all know too well the failings that arose as a result of a pipe that was not cleaned properly in one of Fonterra’s plants that made infant formula, which led to a worldwide recall of products, a host of systemic failings within the testing organisations, and a communications faux pas, and to this day the cost has not truly been fully spelt out in regard to the damage caused by that botulism scare. So this is an important piece of legislation. We are just completing the amendments to the legislation that are required in the adoption of the many recommendations that were made under the Government Inquiry into the Whey Protein Concentrate Contamination Incident.

And so here we are. We are making amendments to our three main food safety Acts: the Animal Products Act, the Food Act, and the Wine Act 2003. Other speakers have touched on the main issues that arose at the Primary Production Committee, and I would like to acknowledge, with thanks, all of the submitters who came before our committee. There were a lot of leaders of industry groups—for instance, Horticulture New Zealand, Meat New Zealand, the meat groups right across the board, and Seafood New Zealand. This is all integral to their adherence to food safety standards, which are in aid of our exporting and the selling of our delicious products worldwide. So it was great that they fronted to the committee and made some very helpful recommendations.

I would like to just touch on, as touched on by Mr McKelvie, the fact that a lot of the submitters actually submitted beyond the scope of what was actually in the bill, but they made some very, very cogent points particularly around—for instance, that dear artisan cheese producer, Biddy, over in the Wairarapa—how we must try to support and foster. It is about striking the balance between minimising the risk and fostering innovation, and also protecting the integrity of our industries as a whole.

When a small artisan cheese producer has to spend 40 percent of their revenue in testing verification, just for a certain batch of cheese, something is not quite right there. You know, I can understand when you are talking about that flash Timaru plant in Fonterra that makes mozzarella in 6 minutes, which we see on the telly at the moment—I can understand that, obviously, that is a very expensive verification process and should be very thorough, but for a very small artisan cheese producer it makes the business uneconomic. That is why, as touched on by Mr O’Connor, it is the innovation that comes from the small producers, particularly these artisan producers—we want to foster that. We do not want to stamp that out through over-regulation and over-compliance. So it is just finding the right balance. We are very concerned about this particular issue, and so I am pleased that we are going to be doing further work in that area. But there were many artisan producers who came before the committee and made that exact point.

Can I also acknowledge—and it is also probably outside the scope of the bill—that there was a very impassioned submission by the early childcare centres in relation to the food safety requirements and the testing and the verification that has to go into just feeding kids in early childcare and, again, the cost that that adds to looking after kids in childcare. Those were some very good submitters.

In terms of the actual bill itself, I am pleased that we were able to provide, I believe, a good model of ensuring that when regulations are made under primary legislation, those regulations must have a clear time frame for being enacted. And so, for instance, the commencement date on certain clauses—rather than just saying that those particular provisions will come into force on the adoption of regulations, we have imposed a time frame for that to happen. And I believe that is actually a good practice that should be adopted across all pieces of legislation. We have recently had the Statutes Repeal Bill because certain pieces of legislation have been redundant and dormant as a result of those very measures. They have never actually come into existence.

The tightening that has taken place around the regulations, particularly around the commencement, certain exemption clauses—those are good practice, and it actually puts the onus now on the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and other agencies to ensure that they actually come up with these regulations promptly, and consult with industry when required, and ensure that the participants in the whole export sector have some certainty around what is required for their business. I think, fundamentally, that is what this bill is all about. It is about providing certainty for our food producers, who transact with markets all over the world, so that they have a very clear knowledge of their responsibilities in relation to how they actually engage in trade.

One of the main, I guess, areas of contention was around the obligation for an owner to supply their complete risk management food safety plans to a verification body and for that verification body to actually hold that plan for every food business that it deals with. These plans can be absolutely enormous. I am talking about thousands of pages just for one export business. I think that whilst we grappled with, you know, making sure that there is tight regulation and the ability to promptly be able to target in and home in on information that may be required for a food recall or testing, I think we struck the right balance there to ensure that it is not necessary for every verification body to hold that voluminous amount of information when, really, that information is already there and is already accessible within the business itself or within MPI itself, and therefore it should be able to readily get to that information if it so needs to.

There is a lot contained within this bill. I have touched on just a few of the main matters that came before the committee, but we are on our way to improving our food safety Acts and I believe that we have done some very good work within this committee. I therefore commend this bill to the House.

Well, this Food Safety Law Reform Bill—I did have the pleasure of sitting on the Primary Production Committee at that time when we considered the bill. As has been referred to, I have left that select committee—

💬 Rino Tirikatene: Come back.

Tēnā koe, Rino. This really marks the last steps in the whey protein concentrate inquiry, and I think it really highlights—there have been a couple of points made there by the previous speaker, Rino Tirikatene, which are quite valid points, that this sort of issue has arisen, and of course it has led to this bill, or major parts of this bill. But that is of course—it is an iterative process, and you do not realise there is a gap until you find that gap by accident. Fortunately, actually, it was not the regulators that caused that issue; it was the producer of the milk powder itself. So that was an issue that has been dealt with.

There is a balancing act, which has been talked about by most of the other speakers, and how—not putting too much burden on the smaller producers. However, when our reputation really hinges on us being a high-quality producer of safe food, then we really have to ensure the whole sector—no matter how big they are, or how small—is actually not causing a risk to the community. I do note—particularly the small cheese producer who has been referred to on several occasions; it is 40 percent or something of their revenue to cover the cost of compliance. It is massive, but it is a very small producer, and the producer is producing cheese from non-pasteurised milk, which has a higher risk profile than it would have if it was from pasteurised milk. So there is a risk.

I accept that we could do better in cutting back on that bureaucracy. However, you have to—really, we charge the Ministry for Primary Industries with the role of making sure food is safe, so if it is going to err one way, I would far sooner see that it errs on the side of safety, than taking a risk with people’s health.

The early childhood education issue was also referred to. The early childhood centres are actually charging money to feed the children whom they are looking after on their properties. It is incumbent on them to actually do that in a safe manner. So if you are charging money for it, then you have to actually meet the regulations. I do not make any apology for that whatsoever.

It did seem a little bit outside the scope of the bill, but that is none the less where it is. It is about food safety, so it was not about early childhood education, although it has an implication for anyone who sells food. So I think it is a great bill. There has been a lot of progress made on that, and I commend it to the House.

Speaking to the Food Safety Law Reform Bill, it was an interesting bill to work through in the Primary Production Committee. Quite a lot of aspects of food safety and food labelling were traversed there. This focuses on the main food safety Acts: the Animal Products Act, the Food Act, and the Wine Act. As stated in the report, the bill is to “improve their alignment, operation, and design to better protect human health, and maintain and strengthen New Zealand’s reputation as a supplier of safe and suitable food, both domestically and internationally.” Really, that is what this bill is primarily about: it is a reputational issue, because of the whey botulism issue.

So what does the bill actually achieve? It reinforces, rather than achieves a lot. It reinforces the need for traceability and transparency. I cannot see where it has significantly changed what exists, but it did mean a thorough going-over, and our trading partners should feel confident that we have refreshed, we have gone through—and our processes are somewhat the better for it, albeit they were pretty good to start with, in some areas. The Green Party will support it. The Green Party also thinks food safety should be separated out from the Ministry for Primary Industries so that it can operate way more impartially in terms of true food safety. Hopefully, very soon, a future Government will achieve that.

One issue that did have some contention—albeit we had no minority views from the select committee—was about having the operators and verifiers hold full copies of risk-based food safety plans and programmes. So many clauses were removed that were about those food safety plans and changes in management actually being sent through to the regulators, the enforcers, at the time of the change. You would think, with a bill like this, that you would do that—that that was the point of it. But they were removed. So some of us, as it was reported, do have concerns about that—that the verification agencies should be holding that stuff immediately. For those in the electronic age—you know, we have got tablets and stuff. Nearly everybody has those; some small cottage industries might not. However, the big actors that this was really aimed at do. They could do that at the touch of a button. For some reason, the ministry and the Government chose to let them off on that point.

In the organic sector, which I have a history in, if we want to change something, we have to send that through to the certifier before we actually do it. We cannot just go changing it. There is some flexibility in there, but you have to let the verification agency, or the certifier, know that you are making that change, so you know that if something happens and you need to do a recall, you want the agencies to know now, not 48 hours later. So the bill slips up in terms of some of the potential that it could have had.

There are requirements to consult, and that is all very good. One thing we traversed, and it was seen as being out of scope, was country-of-origin labelling. There was one of those moments of serendipity in there in that even when my last little effort to try to get an amendment on country-of-origin labelling put in there was being turned down, the members’ ballot was drawn and we got the Consumers’ Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill out. So it has been very good to see the House—apart from one David Seymour—support that bill, and we are working on that now.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! That is not part of this bill.

It is very much in the report back by the select committee that country-of-origin labelling was well traversed, and those points were considered there.

The compliance requirements for small food producers was the next part that was very well covered, and we have heard a bit more of that. The small food producers—Biddy has been mentioned; a number of us have been on that property. The people from Mount Eliza Cheeses came and showed us that a French cheese could be imported and it would not have had anywhere near the testing that these small cheese producers are being put through. They are having to pay the compliance costs here in New Zealand, these small cheese producers, and yet the French stuff can come in through equivalence-type programmes. The cheeses can be on the same shop shelf, right next to each other, and have huge differences in what the requirements are. We are very grateful—we have a new Minister for Food Safety, who is, I think, hearing those submitters, and we look to see some change in that area in the near future.

Another thing that was brought up was the labelling of genetically modified and radiated food, and that was reported back as well. Currently, under regulations, genetically modified food is meant to be labelled. However, we have found that the Ministry for Primary Industries and its predecessor, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, have not monitored or enforced that legal requirement since 2003. I am introducing, as we speak, a Supplementary Order Paper putting in a little bit more encouragement to the chief executive and the ministry, effectively, to ensure that that actually does happen, because consumers want that choice. We have found that that is in scope, and so it will say that the chief executive must ensure regular and effective monitoring and enforcement of food-labelling requirements for irradiated foods and genetically modified foods. For the genetically modified foods it is just not happening. For irradiated foods, because it is a more recent introduction of a food, there is still a bit of labelling happening, but that is drifting away as well.

So that Supplementary Order Paper to amend the Food Safety Law Reform Bill is intended to make it a requirement for the chief executive to regularly and extensively monitor and enforce those requirements, as they are in the food standards 1.5.2, and also 1.5.3 in terms of the irradiated food. Consumers need clear labelling to make informed purchasing choices, because there is no point in putting this stuff into legislation and regulation if they are just totally ignored. I am hoping, as we move through with the country-of-origin labelling part, that, of course, once it is in it will actually be monitored and enforced. Consumers and the public need to be able to have confidence in our food safety laws and our labelling laws to make the laws good and meaningful.

The Food Safety Law Reform Bill is focused on measures to maintain and strengthen New Zealand’s reputation as a supplier of safe and suitable food, with a particular focus on industry monitoring, compliance, and availability of information—and that is where the labelling comes in—and the design of delegated legislation. So that Supplementary Order Paper is to make explicit certain monitoring, compliance, and availability of information to make sure that it occurs as intended under section 18 of the Food Act 2014. I will catch up with the Minister to win over his support on that Supplementary Order Paper, and I assume that, across the House, we will get support for that.

So the Greens will support this bill, as I have stated. There are some shortcomings, and there are some improvements, and traceability and transparency should be the better for it. Thank you.

Well, it has been—I have to go back to remember now—nearly a year since we last debated this bill in the House, but, obviously, not since we last debated it in the Primary Production Committee. I want to echo something that my colleague Steffan Browning has just said in congratulating the new Minister for Food Safety on picking up this bill. I do actually believe that he is listening to the concerns of the committee about particular aspects of this bill—notably, to do with the costs involved in the testing and compliance regime for smaller producers. Since his elevation to Minister-hood, he seems to have sort of morphed from being National’s attack dog to being quite a reasonable, approachable chap. Maybe it is a case of taking the school’s worst troublemaker and turning him into a prefect.

I am not going to take up too much of the House’s time at this particular stage for two reasons. One is that there is not a lot of new ground to go over. I tend to agree with most of the speakers so far, and certainly with members of the committee. We do have a good, consensus approach to this process. The other reason is primarily that a lot of what I was going to say was connected with country-of-origin labelling, which many submitters felt should have been in the bill, and a number of members of the select committee felt should have been in the bill. Of course, as Mr Browning has been fortunate enough to have his member’s bill drawn covering that aspect, it has kind of taken the wind out of those sails a little bit. But it is still pertinent to the discussion around this bill, because it was something that I think many in the industry and many in the public presumed would be a core part of a bill that is to do with reforming food safety law. Perhaps the name was something that made people feel that perhaps things like genetic modification, labelling requirements, and those sorts of things would have been covered by it, when, of course, as we know, and as the ministerial statement from Minister Goodhew reads, when she was introducing it: “The bill is an important part of putting the false botulism scare behind us. It illustrates the Government’s commitment to ensuring the safety and suitability of food, which is vitally important for the health of consumers—both in New Zealand and overseas—and our international trade reputation.”

That is the guts of it, and that is why we have ended up with this Food Safety Law Reform Bill, which is aimed pretty much fairly and squarely at major producers. That is the way things have to be in a country like New Zealand, where, as we have heard, three-quarters of our overseas income is derived from the primary sector, and much of that from food. We produce and sell this food at very high quality to discerning markets on the basis that people around the world trust New Zealand’s reputation, and trust that our processes for producing food will be safe and can be guaranteed to be safe.

It does have the flip side, of course—that imposing those same requirements on smaller, innovative artisan producers may make things untenable for them. Without going back over all the numbers that have been thrown around, it does seem that there is a case for the smaller producer to be treated differently, not in terms of the required safety outcomes, but perhaps in terms of some of the costs and procedures that are involved in determining how records about the safety of process are kept. I have suggested to the Minister that perhaps, in the case of smaller producers—maybe up to a certain size, volume, weight production, or value even—they could be treated differently in that the final product might be the only part of the process that is required to be tested.

Whereas smaller producers should still be required to have a food plan and to record that food plan and to adhere to it, the individual testing along the way of each step, which is an essential matter for larger producers, might not be all that necessary for smaller producers because of the scale of their operation, because, at the end of the day, it is the finished product that is required to be safe. If something does go wrong with a smaller-scale production, it is likely to be very much quicker and easier to locate the source of that and also to stop any potentially dangerous or contaminated product from getting out into the market.

I think that is one of the things that the Minister has considered. I do not know whether he is completely online with that suggestion, but he does appreciate the need for something else to be done. Perhaps his thinking, if I am correct, is that we are moving towards smaller producers perhaps proving the nature of their operation, and, through doing so, winning some concessions in terms of the number of times that they might have to be tested.

I think there are certainly things that the ministry could work on. If we have a cost recovery for getting inspectors into remote places to carry out inspections, these could perhaps be sort of corralled so that you have got one inspector coming up for a few days into a certain area who does a number of businesses so they are not all having to shell out a couple of grand for travel costs and those sorts of things. There could be a coordinated approach. I certainly do get the impression that the new Minister—and, I presume, the officials, because they certainly take their lead from him—has a regime like that in mind.

I think we will probably arrive at a point through the committee process and through the Minister’s intervention where it is possible for us to ensure that the food that we produce at any scale is safe for consumption, both domestically and overseas, and yet we are not stifling that innovation and we are not making it untenable for smaller producers, such as the likes of Biddy, whom I think most of us have visited, and some more than once—and a quite delightful experience it is too, especially with the model railway. I do not know whether you have been there yet, Minister, but there is a model railway and cheese, and how they work together is fascinating. So, looking at the regulatory impact statement, the objectives of this regime are, of course, to make sure that “food is safe and suitable, public health is protected, risks are identified and managed, New Zealand’s good reputation increases access to overseas markets; and market access is facilitated.”

Again, that comes down to the perception of New Zealand as being a trustworthy nation and having sophisticated processes, and so forth. In terms of some of the backstory behind that, it is interesting that we are amending the Wine Act as well. As some members of the House will be able to attest, if many consumers saw what goes on in wineries before the finished product arrives in the bottle on the supermarket shelf, they might be appalled. At harvest what go into the vats are crushed grapes, yes, but this also includes dust and dirt and spiders and wasps, unmentionable things that vineyard workers have stepped in, diesel, and all manner of unmentionable matter that is then purified by the action of fermentation, and we end up with a lovely crystal-clear, translucent, and somewhat delicious beverage at the other end of it. Yet, for a very long time—in fact, if we go back into the history of wine production, as with cheese, as with butter, through certainly the history of this country and across Europe—there were no standards and no means of attaining a standard anyway, other than the final test that if the wine did not kill you, it was good, and if it did, something had gone wrong.

So, as I say, without wanting to take up too much more time of the House, New Zealand First will continue to support this bill. We believe that there are still modifications that can and will be made to it. I think at the end of that process we will end up with a piece of legislation that is very fit for purpose. Thank you.

I also would like to make mention of our new food safety Minister and acknowledge the cross-party respect that he seems to have across the House. I only want to speak—

💬 Grant Robertson: I wouldn’t call it respect.

Do not test my voice. I want to speak on only two topics today, and one of them is around the substantial change we made in terms of people being able to send only part copies of what they have changed to the verifier, rather than having to send everything in every time they make a small change.

If there is one thing that really grits me it is costly, complex compliance. As you can imagine, a lot of our bigger producers now are quite technically able, and so when they make a small change it is very easy to digitally send that in. But, actually, we have also got quite a lot of small producers who are working on paper-based folders, and so if they are going to make one small change it just makes sense to notify the verifier of that rather than go to the extreme of having to send the whole folder in again, because it just does not make sense to do so.

The second thing I wanted to really cover off—because I know we get a lot of concerns about people who run food stalls, and things like that, that they are going to get caught up—is that the Food Act covers only food that is sold or traded. There is a clear exemption to allow fund-raising sausage sizzles and home baking at school fairs to take place. So food safety should never be compromised, but again we do not want to put people in the situation where they are finding that it is very costly and very difficult. So growing food for personal use, sharing it with others, bringing a plate to a club or a committee—that is the foundation we are based on here in New Zealand, and we should never try to change the way we do hospitality and fund-raising. Thank you.

The next call is a split call. Mojo Mathers—5 minutes.

It is my pleasure to take a short call on this bill. I was not part of the select committee process, so I have not been party to the details of submissions and arguments and discussions. However, I am pleased that we are supporting the bill, because, at the end of the day, we all share a common concern and drive to ensure the safety of the food that we consume, and this bill goes some way to improving that.

It is worthwhile thinking about, you know—because food is something that we all eat and we all care about—along with some of the core principles around the food that we eat. For the Green Party, I think they fall into two main categories. Firstly, there is the whole category of the consumer’s right to know: to know what it is they are eating—what the ingredients are—and also where it comes from. These are two very fundamental aspects about our food that we want to know. The other thing that the consumer is often really concerned about is whether we can trust that the food that we are eating is safe. Can we trust that the regulatory regime is strong enough and robust enough to ensure that our food is safe for consumption?

But in addition to that, around the whole trust issue is the trust that the labelling is honest—that the food is what is says it will be but also that if something is required to be labelled, that information is actually on the product. We have, you know, regulations and requirements for food to be labelled with the GE ingredients or for irradiation. The consumers expect that to be enforced. It goes to the heart of trust in the food regulatory system that if we do have a regulation that does require something to be labelled, we expect that to be monitored and we expect that to be enforced. So it is absolutely concerning that GE and irradiated foods have not been—the regulations around them have not been monitored or enforced since 2003. We would certainly like to see that rectified with this bill in the Committee stage, with the amendment that my colleague Steffan Browning is putting forward. Just as the compliances and the processes that are being provided for in this bill are all about meeting consumer trust in the process, particularly in our overseas market, so we have to have trust that the existing regulations are being monitored and enforced. All these elements fit together.

I share the concern around the fact that at the select committee stage the committee seemed to weaken the provision for having the most up-to-date plans available. With modern technology within the digital age, really any business that is serious about food production should be able to do so quickly and easily through digital formats, to ensure that the most up-to-date plans are available to the verification agencies. In some ways, it seems to be locked in an old way of approach.

Finally, I just want to echo the points that have been raised by several speakers, notably Damien and Prosser, and so on, around small artisan cheese companies. It is absolutely really important that we can adapt the bill to ensure that the compliance costs are not disproportionate to the risk involved. When the compliance costs and the level of testing required are going to cost up to 40 percent of their income, something needs to be done. We are talking about very small-scale producers, so therefore—the risk is lower for small-scale producers because the risk is related to the scale of the production and how many people are going to actually be consuming this cheese. It is also worthwhile realising that, of course, the comparable product imported does not have to meet the same level of testing. Therefore, why are we expecting our domestic cheeses to be at a higher level than imported cheese? We are hoping that that will be resolved. Thank you.

I call Michael Wood—5 minutes.

I am very happy to speak to the Food Safety Law Reform Bill in this second reading. Before I go on to my substantive comments, I just acknowledge Minister Bennett for shepherding this legislation so beautifully through to this point—it is Minister Bennett’s time to shine—and recognise my Labour Party colleagues who have played a part in the select committee process to date: immediately to my right, Rino Tirikatene, Damien O’Connor, and other members of the Primary Production Committee. One of the pleasant surprises that I have had in my now 6 months in the House has been that when it comes to these kinds of issues, there is actually a reasonably pragmatic and workmanlike approach across party lines to dealing with these sorts of issues, where we can—

💬 Hon Christopher Finlayson: Workperson.

Workperson—thank you very much. It is always good to have the National Government front bench ensure that we say the right things and focus on the big issues. But when we are confronted with these issues, there is a pragmatic approach to doing what we need to do in terms of public good regulation in many cases, and this is one.

Of course, this issue came out of—and this is a real mouthful, but it is important to go back to the source of these issues—the independent Government Inquiry into the Whey Protein Concentrate Contamination Incident, which, of course, we know is the false botulism scare that hit a couple of years ago. It was extremely serious—extremely serious. I was reading some of the Minister’s comments before, and this goes to the heart of why food safety really matters and why getting this bill right is important. Food comprises 60 percent of our merchandise exports, brings in $27 billion of export income, and directly supports 80,000 jobs across our economy. Those export markets that we send our produce to, whether it is milk powder, as was the case in the false botulism scandal, whether it is meat, whether it is fresh dairy, whether it is apples—whatever it is, those foreign markets that we are sending them to that generate the incomes and the jobs need to have absolute confidence in the integrity of our food safety systems, as of course do the New Zealand consumers, who are major consumers of those products as well.

So there are, really, two issues within here. One is, I guess, the moral imperative to ensure that our food safety systems do deliver safe food to people. It would be wrong if we, as a Parliament, allowed our food safety systems to put out food that is not safe, that makes people unwell. But, secondly, our international reputation as someone who you can do business with, as someone who you can trade with with confidence absolutely rests upon these kinds of systems being right.

So what this bill does is amend three Acts: the Food Act, the Animal Products Act, and the Wine Act. Largely, the Wine Act is made consistent with the provisions of the other Act. Really, what we are doing here is engaging a piece of public-good regulation. I just want to touch on that principle for a moment, because, of course, whenever we get into these areas—and it is reflected in some of the submissions that I have read through—there is always a tension, there is always a balance. When we put public-good regulation in place, we are saying there are some things that we want to achieve as a society here that are important for the common good. Generally speaking, when we do that there may be some costs and some inconveniences to some people who are caught up within that system, but what we have to do is balance those things up and strike a reasonable balance. As I review the bill as it stands, particularly with some of the small changes that have been made by the select committee, it does seem to me that we have struck a pretty good balance here in terms of getting the public-good objectives, ensuring safe food systems, without being extremely onerous.

Some of the key provisions of the bill include strengthening of the provisions around food control plans, putting in proper requirements that people who are producing and serving up food actually have adequate food control plans. This seems to me to be pretty common sense; we need to make sure that those are fit for purpose. The bill also talks about national programmes and ensuring that those national programmes around food safety have proper oversight and that food businesses that are operating under those national programmes actually have to register their businesses in accordance with regulations that might take place under those national programmes. So there is a range of very sensible, pragmatic measures here that I think can give our consumers and our trading partners far more confidence in our food safety systems.

One final comment I will just make, which my colleague Damien O’Connor, I think, made in his first reading speech, is that I do think there is a bit more consideration for us to make about, potentially, the separation of policy implementation and enforcement, which is currently all there in the Ministry of Primary Industries. That is a possible further step we can look at. I commend this bill to the House.

I would like first to acknowledge and mention Biddy; she has been mentioned a couple of times around the traps this afternoon, and she is an interesting lady. She hand-milks two or three cows just outside of Eketāhuna in the mighty Wairarapa, and her brand of cheese is called Cwmglyn. It is a hard cheese, and it wins international medals around the world.

I appreciate that there needs to be rules and regulations around food safety, but we do have to be careful that we do not over-regulate and make the compliance to such an extent that it discourages innovation and award-winning producers like Biddy. I do note that the Primary Production Committee says exactly that there is merit and warrant for further consideration with regard to the smaller submitters and producers. I do appreciate that there are other ways. There will be better ways and more practical ways that have been mentioned already by Mr Prosser in his contribution.

The other piece of that is, of course, that there are other handmade, small cheese producers. There is another one in Featherston, C’est Cheese, which is really focused on attracting and supporting the tourism industry. That is where the margins are made. It is not around commodity cheese; it is around high-value, hand-produced cheese. So, again, we need to make sure that the rules and regulations that we set in this place continue to allow those people to innovate, to snowball and support other industries vis-à-vis the tourism industry.

I would just like to mention one other thing, and that is to talk about the traceability and the recall provisions. Traceability of food is very, very important. It is about the safety, but it is also about the brand—the brand is far more important than anything, in my view, in the production of food, whether it is red meat or cheese or vegetables. People do pay a premium for a brand, and the New Zealand brand is a strong one that we must continue to support and protect. For that reason, I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Otirā, e ngā mema o Te Whare nei. Tēnā tātau katoa. I am happy to take a call on the Food Safety Law Reform Bill. I too want to acknowledge the hard-working Minister, the Hon David Bennett, in bringing a bill of this importance to this House. Of course, Labour is going to support—

💬 Hon David Bennett: Someone’s going to mean it when they say it soon.

Take it while you can. Clearly, I want to acknowledge the hard-working Primary Production Committee. It was a committee that I enjoyed for the short time that I was on it. I want to acknowledge my colleagues Damien O’Connor and Rino Tirikatene for their contributions in the passage of this particular bill.

Just to remind us, this bill addresses the recommendations of the Government Inquiry into the Whey Protein Concentrate Contamination Incident, and the bill attempts to improve and enhance the three Acts governing the food safety system, improving the alignment, operation, and design, so as to better protect human health and maintain and strengthen New Zealand’s reputation as a supplier of safe and suitable food, both domestically and internationally. Not only it is every New Zealander’s birthright to consume safe food, but as we are a nation people surrounded by sea and we have got a very productive land base—although some of us would say our rivers are a bit polluted—we also have a birthright to have access to clean food. This bill is clearly an attempt to make sure that our food system—our food safety system—is fit for purpose.

So the key parts of the bill, as other speakers have talked about, are around new requirements for risk-based plans and programmes, the traceability and recall regulations, the stronger verification, and, of course, the stronger enforcement. Like I said, I am not a member of the Primary Production Committee, but I do just want to raise some points as recorded in the report from the committee. I want to make a couple of comments on that particular report, and acknowledge that in terms of clause 2, regarding the commencement date, I see there must have been some debate at the select committee around the open-endedness of when the legislation would take effect.

I know that the committee has settled on a 2-year enforcement after the commencement date, making sure that we actually have a date where this would kick in, to ensure that the regulations that underpin this bill are given enough time to see through. I guess the only comment I want to make around those 2 years to allow regulation is to ensure that we have a system to monitor the progress of those regulations. I am sure the honourable Minister has got that in his purview.

The other comment about the select committee’s report is around the requirements to consult, and I note that the committee recommends amending clause 149 of the bill to ensure that section 163 of the Act requires consultation, and it talks about the new headings in terms of tracing and recall, verification, record-keeping and reporting, infringement notices, and risk management. I just wanted, again, to acknowledge that recommendation from the select committee.

There have been many comments by contributors to this second reading around country-of-origin labelling. I listened to the chairman of the select committee talk about the 30-odd—there were actually 43—submitters to this particular bill in the select committee process, saying that many of them were out of scope. I guess country-of-origin labelling was one of those examples where submissions were clearly out of scope, as others have said. What I want to say is that I want to acknowledge those large producers, like supermarket chains like Progressive Enterprises and Foodstuffs, which are actually doing voluntary initiatives around country-of-origin labelling and, hopefully, if not in this bill, the Minister may pick examining and reviewing the extension beyond just voluntary initiatives to making it more mandatory across the board.

Under the compliance requirements for small food producers—there probably is not one MP in this House who does not have a local farmers market. I attend mine in Hawkes Bay, and I would say that the Hawke’s Bay farmers market at Tōmoana showgrounds is one of the best in the country. The reason I mention that is to make sure that this bill does not stop innovation around some of the produce that is coming through from small farming markets. Some of them are going to market—they are expanding. I know this is a food safety bill that we are debating, but, you know, the innovation that I have seen in a short time in our local farmers market is quite amazing. Once upon a time it was cheese and wine, but now you are seeing things like figs and you are getting meat that has been dried and passed off in so many different ways. I guess the point is that we have got to support our local producers. They are doing quite innovative things, and we must make sure that the balance around this bill does not stymie the innovation of those small farming producers.

I also want to acknowledge the submitters around New Zealand raw milk and imported raw milk, in terms of some of the standards. That was put up, again, to the select committee with New Zealand raw milk cheese producers saying that they are treated differently from the imported raw milk cheese producers. I am sure, again, the Minister notes that the Ministry for Primary Industries is currently reviewing it. So we are not saying “No, you have to comply.”, but there is a possibility that there could be something done around our New Zealand raw milk producers in this country.

I do, like I said, want to acknowledge the 43 submitters who submitted to the select committee, of whom 11 gave oral evidence. I believe that this bill has factored in all those submitters in making the changes necessary to, like I say, get the right balance in terms making sure of every Kiwi’s birthright to food that is safe and clean, and ensuring that we are allowing the producers their innovation and their energy. Tomorrow’s growers, if we are going to expand our primary production area, not just in fruit, cheese, fish, and meat—a lot of Kiwi local growers are evolving and innovating as we speak. So with that small contribution, I commend this bill to the House.

It is a pleasure to be talking on the Food Safety Law Reform Bill, in its second reading, of course. Before I start, I just want to acknowledge the new Minister in charge of this, Minister David Bennett—a fine fellow doing a great job. But I think we should also just acknowledge the Hon Jo Goodhew, who introduced this bill originally as a final step in terms of implementing all the recommendations of the Government Inquiry into the Whey Protein Concentrate Contamination Incident. I should also acknowledge the chair of the Primary Production Committee, Mr Ian McKelvie, and the committee members.

Unfortunately, I did not sit on the committee, but as I represent one of the food bowls of New Zealand, the fantastic area of Franklin, this is a very, very important bill from my perspective. I do note that the Government is actually implementing all 38 recommendations from that inquiry.

Why is this important? Well, we all know, do we not, Mr Robertson, that food and beverage exports account for 60 percent of New Zealand merchandise sold overseas. That is why it is vital. I think this is a great bill, as we have heard before. I do not really want to spend a lot of time on it, but it does deal with the main things about getting information at the right time, particularly during an emergency so we do not see a repeat of some of the events that we have seen in the past. So I certainly commend this bill to the House.

Bill read a second time.