Food Safety Law Reform Bill

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m pleased to take a call in this 52nd Parliament, continuing on the committee stage for the Food Safety Law Reform Bill. As one of the members of the Primary Production Committee of the 51st Parliament, along with the Minister now seated in the chair, Damien O’Connor, it’s great that we are able to now be in Government to be able to continue on the passage of this very sensible piece of legislation.

As we know, the background—if I can just quickly canvass that again. This bill arose as a result of the whey protein inquiries on what was called the botulism scare. As we know, a Fonterra plant had a dirty pipe and—long story short—it led to massive worldwide recalls of whey protein concentrate, which was used as an ingredient in child infant formula. This went all the way around the world in terms of the recalls. It caused substantial damage to customer relationships, to suppliers of baby food, particularly Danone. As we know, there’s been only recently results of an arbitration that went against Fonterra to the tune of well over $100 million. So the costs of this episode are still being felt. This bill was in direct result of the recommendations that came out of the inquiries—two inquiries, actually—that took place in the aftermath of that event.

This bill is widely supported. We heard from a number of submitters from major industry groups in the primary sector—major exporters. This bill is all about protecting the reputation of New Zealand exporters, ensuring that we have impeccable standards, and that we can compete and supply our wonderful produce and export products worldwide. So it’s really important. This cuts right to the heart of the integrity of our food systems and also our ability to trade with the outside world.

This bill amends three pieces of legislation: the Animal Products Act, the Wine Act, and the Food Act—I’m just quickly relaying it from memory. We heard from major industry groups, from the likes of the horticulture industry, the meat industry, the seafood industry, and, of course, the dairy industry. We heard from exporters and processors, large and small, who all have an active and keen interest in this piece of legislation. On the whole, most of the operational changes that occurred didn’t require legislative change, but this bill captures all of those changes that need to be implemented through legislation.

So in this contribution, I wanted to touch on—and, hopefully, I might be able to get another one—and to really cover the main areas in terms of the provisions of this bill around the scope of delegated legislation. I think that was a big area that we heard submissions on at the select committee. Just last evening, we considered the Legislation Bill, which would be looking at a central registry of all secondary legislation, and a core part of being able to reinforce our systems of traceability, of recall, of enforcement—it all cuts to the ability for quick decisions to be made and for systems to be in place.

The ability to activate those systems as a matter of urgency not only requires primary legislation to be in place, not only requires secondary legislation by way of regulations, but might also require more technical pieces of legislation such as notices or subsequent notices to reinforce or to provide more detail, I suppose, on the actual secondary legislation or regulations. So a large part of the work that we did at the committee was listening and trying to deal with the concerns around providing certainty, providing a cost-effective regime by which exporters and food manufacturers of all sizes would be able to comply, meet their obligations, and also tighten up our regime.

So I believe we’ve struck a good balance in the bill, right across all the three principal pieces of legislation that we are amending, in that we are leaving scope for secondary legislation to be able to be consulted upon with industry and also to be able to be implemented in a timely fashion, but also making sure that it is constrained and it is not an unfettered power that we are granting to the Ministry for Primary Industries or certain other officials or decision-making bodies that are involved in making these critical decisions.

So a lot of what we are doing with this piece of legislation concerns putting in place the framework by which our major food exporters, meat exporters, and wine exporters can have confidence that their food plans, and their risk management plans, and everything that is involved in their manufacturing processes and their export processes are robust and are able, I guess, to stand up to the scrutiny, and, ultimately, stand up to what might be an urgent event that may arise. All of it is designed to ensure that we have just a strong, robust system so we can ensure that the quality and the reputation of our export products maintain an impeccable standard.

I just want to—as we are talking about the different levels and scope that are contained in the bill around the secondary legislation—acknowledge the fact that there was the best practice that has been followed through the Legislative Design and Advisory Committee, and that committee, made up of eminent senior practitioners and legal minds—

💬 Chris Bishop: Could be you one day.

Could be. Ha, ha! It set forth the elements for producing the secondary regulations. Having gone through all of those elements, the committee was satisfied, through the very good advice that we received from officials, that the regime that is now in place through this bill would be able to cater for the wide variety of instances, be it through regulations, be it through notices, be it through subsequent notices—it would cover the full array of situations but also fall within good legislative practice, and I’m pleased that, as a committee, the work that we achieved on the bill was able to meet those high standards and generally be supported by all of the major food industry groups.

And we’re not talking about—sure, there might have been maybe a dozen or so of these groups, but the membership of those groups, which they represent, is enormous, if we are talking about Horticulture New Zealand and all of the different product groups that they represent, and the meat industry. So I commend this bill.

Madam Chairperson Williams, it is with great pleasure that I stand to support this bill on behalf of New Zealand First. It is also good to be participating in democracy, and I note the lay down misère over the other side of the Chamber. This is an important bill and deserves important scrutiny from this committee. With all due respect to the debate that we have had just previously, this is not debating the relevance of the fax machine; this is debating some of the most important issues around the food safety and sustainability of the New Zealand economy.

This bill, as my colleague Rino Tirikatene has just pointed out, is a result of the independent Government inquiry into the false botulism scare, the whey protein. This was a shot across the bows of New Zealand’s food safety regulations and systems, and it was good that it turned out to be a false scare, but it was one that we have to take the opportunity to look at and see if our systems are, in fact, robust and fit for purpose. That was a very, very expensive exercise. I note Danone—$183 million in costs they have got off Fonterra. That is probably only the tip of the iceberg, when we look at a lot of the other issues that would have flowed from that.

This is to better align the current standards and regulations under our three main food Acts, as has been pointed out—the Animal Products Act 1999, the Food Act 2014, and the Wine Act 2003. This is an imperative, that we protect the reputation of New Zealand’s food producers and exporters with the twin pillars of biosecurity and food safety—and I note the new Minister putting extra scrutiny over both of those twin pillars—and that is welcome in this 52nd Parliament. It is imperative that we have world’s best practice and gold standard, and, particularly, as I note, as we face new competition from alternative synthetic proteins, that doesn’t allow us to rest on our laurels in any way, shape, or form.

This is really important for New Zealand, in the sense that we are the only agrarian First World economy in the world—

💬 Matt King: We agree. Let’s vote.

And it will affect Northland, Mr King. You may make light of this, but it will affect Northland. Northland is an agrarian economy. This will be very, very important for Northland.

Let’s look at the things we are doing: the free fees, first-year free fees—and we’ve just heard today that that is going to be extended to trades for a second year—extending paid parental leave, regional development and our billion-dollar fund and our billion-tree strategy, which will vitalise the regions like Northland.

The CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order! Order! [Interruption] Order! Could we come back to the bill.

All this, Madam Chairperson, is possible only because we have a food industry—a $6.5 billion horticulture industry, $8.5 billion of red meats, $17.5 billion in our dairy sector. We cannot afford to trifle with this particular sector, and that’s only the big ones; there are plenty more. So we need to improve these programmes and food safety regulations through this legislation. Exporters—and when we need to empower the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) to be able to act in a more effective and timely manner.

We need more robust traceability—so we need a lot of the things that have been brought forward in this bill. The mock recalls, for example, are things that are already standard practice within our large exporters. Our customers are demanding it, so it’s just regulation actually catching up with what is already being demanded, and tidying some of this up.

MPI, I note, are not going to enforce duplication. They are going to respect some of these practices that are already there, so there are some good pragmatic things already there. New Zealand First did have some concerns around the effect on artisan food producers. We have talked with officials who have given us some reassurance that those things have been covered. So we look forward to progressing this bill.

Thank you, Madam Chair Williams. I am reluctant to rise, given the enthusiasm to speak on this bill in the committee tonight. But I would like to take the opportunity to acknowledge the Opposition, who were in Government when this unfortunate incident with the WPC80, the false botulism incident, occurred. That, as has been pointed out, has cost this country literally hundreds of millions of dollars, and it’s a wake-up call to our whole country.

I acknowledge the progress made by the previous Government to work through that inquiry, to look at the recommendations and then to move through to implement them through this piece of legislation. I acknowledge David Bennett, who was the previous Minister who introduced the bill into the House. I’d welcome a contribution from him, I guess to give some of the background that he heard in developing this legislation.

Can I just say that I would like to welcome support for the bill across the House. I know that the previous Green member of Parliament, Steffan Browning, had Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 355 that he had brought at the last minute to this piece of legislation, and we’ve had discussions with the Green Party to work through issues that are legitimate issues. They were, in the SOP—and I’m not sure whether the Greens will still proceed—issues around labelling, the labelling of GM food and irradiated food in this country.

The request was a perfectly reasonable one: that we should more thoroughly investigate where inappropriate labelling has been occurring. I’ve committed to the Green Party that we will follow up on that as a matter of course—in fact, there’s a legal obligation to do that, but, of course, many of the Government departments were squeezed under the previous Government. We don’t have all the money to fix everything immediately, and so they had to prioritise investigations. We will look at the level of inappropriate labelling that has been occurring, and follow up on that.

Can I just also acknowledge concern—and I think there was an amendment from New Zealand First—around the issue of costs for small innovative food producers in the food system. Can I put on the record that as an incoming Government that is looking to grow value in the regional and rural economy, we will look to ensure that the regime laid down by the Food Act and by any amendments that we may bring in will indeed offer them opportunity and encouragement to get out and do their thing, and not be unduly hindered by huge costs.

I know the Primary Production Committee heard from Biddy. Anyone who hasn’t heard from Biddy, who’s a cheesemaker from the Wairarapa, should go and look. I think the Ministry for Primary Industries has a file about this high on Biddy. She was a staunch advocate for small artisan cheese producers, and I acknowledge the effort she put in to bring that wisdom to Parliament through the select committee. So we’ve committed to follow up with New Zealand First to ensure that we put in place a regime that is affordable and effective for them.

There was, at the last minute, SOP 316 from the then Government itself when the bill was introduced. It’s been tabled. We will follow through with that. It does three things, basically. The first one is provide the ability for the director-general to delegate to other senior officials some decision-making powers. The terrible reality was that he was offshore when the WPC80 incident occurred, and there were some legal restrictions on what anyone could say at that time. So the Government’s proposed that—the previous Government did—and we’ll follow through on that.

The other one is, and it might be of great interest to the members on this side of the Chamber, making the sale of hemp seed legal. It’s a very low-THC food, so, for the members on this side of the Chamber who are thinking they might, you know, see an opportunity here for a bit of fun, you’ll have to probably eat tonnes of hemp seed before you get a bit of a buzz. But the point is that New Zealand and Australia jointly agreed that the sale of hemp seed was a very low risk and that it was a perfectly legitimate new food for people who want to eat it, but because it has very small amounts of THC, we couldn’t do it under current legislation. So we’re making changes there.

The other changes are technical. Very briefly, they’re technical changes that officials have advised the previous Government and this Government need to be carried through. This is a very important piece of legislation, and I welcome support from across the Chamber for its progress.

Madam Chair Williams, thank you for the call following on from Minister O’Connor, who is not unknown to me. We did spend some time on farms together as youths, so we come from a similar place when we talk about the need for food safety. It may seem somewhat unusual that as the member for Ōhāriu—for those who don’t know, when you fly into Wellington in a southerly, you look down on what would appear to be a largely urban electorate, but between there and the coast is a quite considerable farm part of my electorate, one that I spent some part of my youth in. I was found to be useful out there, because once they found out I could crutch sheep, I was very quickly accepted into that community. But I’d make that point to say that I have one of those electorates where a bill like this is incredibly important across the board.

The Minister talked about labelling. We understand such a risk of mislabelling. Even in this very Chamber today, we saw the Speaker—I’m not sure, Madam Chair, if I’m allowed to refer to the Speaker. I know many of the members across the Chamber do look similar. The term “Stepford husbands” has been used. But the Speaker made a mistake with Messrs King and Falloon, who were mistaken for each other today. It just shows how easily mistakes can be made, so it’s important. We saw what did happen.

Perhaps going further down the bill, can I just talk about one very sensible—

The CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): I’m sorry to interrupt the member. The time has come for me to report progress.

Progress to be reported presently.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported the Maritime Transport Amendment Bill with amendment, the Maritime Crimes Amendment Bill with amendment, the Electronic Interactions Reform Bill with amendment, and progress on the Food Safety Law Reform Bill.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.