Food (Continuation of Dietary Supplements Regulations) Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Food (Continuation of Dietary Supplements Regulations) Amendment Bill.

That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

💬 Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: I move, That the Food (Continuation of Dietary Supplements Regulations) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

When we think about dietary supplements, which are a subset of natural health products, I think a confusing thing for many people is the idea that because they’re natural supplements, they’re somehow benign, but that is not at all the case. Dietary supplements include products like iron tablets, which, as well as being a crucial health product for many people suffering from amenia, is also a leading cause of poisoning of young children when they inadvertently swallow the tablets. Glucosamine is an important treatment for osteoarthritis, and borne out of many clinical studies; and St John’s Wort as well is a product that has many interactions with important medicines that people take. So these products can be helpful to people, and they are certainly not at all benign from a safety perspective.

So that’s why it’s important that we pass this bill. This bill will extend the Dietary Supplements Regulations 1985. It will maintain our current safety measures that we have, and New Zealand’s reputation as a supplier of quality dietary supplements. It will maintain consumers’ access to these products, and it will give industry the certainty they need to keep operating while a new regulatory regime is developed.

This bill was reported back by the Primary Production Committee in December last year, with the recommendation that it be passed without amendment. I thank the members of the committee for their consideration of this bill. The committee received 12 written submissions and had one oral submission from key parties that represented a range of perspectives. Submitters generally supported the bill, including the five-year extension. I’m very grateful for the individuals and organisations that took the time to make submissions.

Dietary supplements are health and wellness products taken orally in dose forms to supplement the diet. Examples are vitamins like vitamin C or mineral supplements, Echinacea, fish oils, and probiotic tablets. The Dietary Supplements Regulations 1985 is old, but at the moment there is nothing suitable to replace these regulations with, and they expire at the end of the month. Because they have some safety and suitability measures, these regulations need to be continued until a new regime is developed. In particular, the existing regulations restrict some ingredients, provide maximum doses on some vitamins and minerals, and prohibit misleading statements and therapeutic claims.

Recently, a Southern Cross healthcare survey found that at least 750,000 people in New Zealand consumed at least some dietary supplements for at least five years. They are widely used by our community. Extending the regulations will mean that our industry can continue to grow while new regulations are developed. In 2019, Natural Health Products New Zealand estimated the wider New Zealand supplement industry contributed $2.3 billion to the New Zealand economy annually, and had a five-year compound annual growth rate of 10 percent. This is impressive and points to the strength of our industry and its ability to innovate and utilise some of our unique flora and fauna to produce high-quality products and ingredients, and we must continue to support that. I think it’s important to recognise that, in the context of COVID-19, being able to continue to support the sale of these types of products is an important part of our recovery.

The bill makes an extension by changing the expiry date of the regulations in the Food Act 2014 to March 2026. The bill must be passed before 1 March, otherwise the regulations expire. If that happens, dietary supplements would be regulated by general laws under the Food Act. There would be confusion and uncertainty without clarification of what safety and suitability means in relation to dietary supplements. As I’ve stated before, this matters because dietary supplements are not at all benign in terms of their health impacts. There would likely be an increased risk of unsafe and unsuitable products being sold, and many dietary supplements could be determined to be non-compliant. This could result in considerable cost to the industry and regulators in reduced access for consumers. Importing countries may not accept New Zealand dietary supplements without us having specific regulations.

Therefore, a five-year extension to the regulations is needed to allow consultation and development of new legislation and a minimum two-year transition period. Minister O’Connor has already stated in the last Parliament that it is not our intention that the full five-year period be used, but the intention is for a new regime to be fully implemented within five years. But we want this to be a five-year extension to avoid the need to consume the House’s time with further extensions and the needless resources of officials. It’s important to state that our aim would be to combine these regulations with a therapeutic goods bill, which takes a more health approach to the regulation of these products. A five-year extension also allows for us to manage any potential slowdowns due to COVID-19.

This bill, agreed by the committee, reflects considerations of the comments received from submitters. I commend the Food (Continuation of Dietary Supplements Regulations) Amendment Bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, it’s ironic in this House that the last two bills we’ve been debating, over yesterday and today, have seen a massive rush to get bills to very shortened select committees, and bad process around not allowing the public to have consultation.

Now, this bill, the Food (Continuation of Dietary Supplements Regulations) Amendment Bill—we’re in a rush to slow it down. I want to acknowledge the current Minister, who is in the House and has spoken to the bill, because she’s a new member and a new Minister of this House. But, actually, here we are passing legislation, which expires on 1 March, to extend it for five years. So we’re in a hurry to slow it down, and so good on the Minister for bringing it now, but I’m not so sure why it has got to the point, on behalf of the last Government, where it became so urgent that it had to be rushed through at this period of time just to get it where it is.

It’s a very simple piece of legislation. The actual amendment bill itself is shorter than the explanatory note, so there’s very little to it. It has been through select committee. It’s not to make light or underestimate the importance of food safety, as the Minister just mentioned, but, certainly, there’s very little to this bill.

The explanatory note says that it will provide certainty for the industry and the consumers. Yes, there will be some certainty there that there’s another five years’ extension on this to put a regime in place—and the Minister has just said it may not take five years. But, look, this extension on a bill that’s got regulations that are 35 years old—this is 1985, with a five-year extension. It’s very questionable to say that COVID—we’ve only had COVID for a year, and, yes, COVID has got in the way of some things, but it’s very hard to believe that a Government that was in play for three years and had COVID for the last year of that Government has actually had to extend this.

So, really, with this bill, there is nothing to see here. Even the select committee, really—they went through the bill. I wasn’t on the select committee at the time, but they recommended that there be no adjustments to do to this bill from their perspective. It only has two provisions, and each provision amends dates contained within the Food Act which refer to the expiry of the Dietary Supplements Regulations 1985. So now we have between now and 1 March 2026 to get these regulations in place.

So, yes, it will provide certainty for the industry, but only certainty that the time frame has now been put out to 40 years. If I think back 40 years—and it’s easy for someone like me to do that—the range of dietary supplements that have been on the market and developed over that time has become quite huge. I think it’s a bill that should have been acted on way before now, but, with no regulations for the dietary supplements, they will be regulated by general laws that apply to food, and as the Minister just explained, there is some risk around this.

What we’ve been told is that the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) supports a five-year extension as the preferred policy option. Now, this is an interesting observation, in that everything else is being done in such a hurry. It looks like MPI wants to really allow themselves a lot of time to go through this and to go through this thoroughly. I would encourage that this happens a lot more quickly than what is being proposed with this piece of legislation.

So I’m not sure that the time frames on this are ambitious. In fact, I’m sure that the time frames on this are definitely not ambitious. I get that MPI want to do it properly. I understand that, but we do have some laws in place now that can be a basis for that. What I do hope is that when these regulations are put in place, that they’re not over-regulatory red tape and that they are simple, that they are easy to follow, and that the industry can pick them up and function with them quite quickly, because the industry actually—a quote from the select committee: “The regulations are shockingly out-of-date but we have no choice but to very reluctantly support the Bill in order to ensure that … at least [there’s] some kind of regulation in place for natural health products. At best it is a case of ‘something … better than nothing—but only just.’ Our industry has been calling for a modern regulatory [system] regime over the past 20 years, an issue that is becoming increasingly urgent given the chilling effect the situation is having on [the] export market”.

I would go further as to say here that one of the submitters said they’ve seen examples of local businesses—and this is a quote—“receiving export offers for innovative new products that use unique local ingredients, only to discover they cannot export the products because New Zealand’s standards don’t comply with regulations in comparable jurisdictions such as Australia, the US or Dubai.” So there we are actually losing valuable export market because we’re allowing up to another five years for these regulations to be put in place, when they could have been worked on.

So if we’re going to use COVID-19 as an excuse and a reason why this hasn’t been done, maybe we should ask the Government to use COVID-19 as a reason to hurry this up, because what we’re looking for as a country in our new order of the world, where we’ve lost tourism and we’ve had to change the way we do things in a number of areas—we’re looking for new technology and new products that we can take to the world. We’ve been very lucky as a country that the majority of our exports have been trading well in a world that has been pretty upside down and is still pretty upside down and will be for quite some time to come, and that our trade and exports have been a large part of what’s kept us afloat and have been keeping the economy going. I have to say, across all agriculture and horticultural products, things have largely gone quite well. I have to mention the exception of wool, which needs a great boost.

So the submitter said, “It’s absolutely heart-breaking … given many of our members are small businesses [and they] are greatly affected by lost opportunities such as these.” So I would encourage this Minister, who has actually come in and made a move on this bill—thank you—to get this moving, particularly for the people who want to export, but also the people who want to sell in the local market, to please encourage MPI to look at going a bit faster. You’ve expressed the need or the thoughts around that that you probably want to do that, and I think it’s really imperative that we do that, not only for the food safety issue but because we have some great products here and we need the market, the overseas markets, and we need the products and we need the trade more than we ever have before. So thank you, Madam Speaker, and what I would like to say also is that National is supporting this bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on this piece of legislation as the newly elected chair of the Primary Production Committee. But before I begin my speech, can I just acknowledge Barbara Kuriger as the previous chair of the select committee, and David Bennett prior to her. So thank you for your time as chairs on this select committee.

As has been traversed, this is merely an amendment to a regulation that amends the Food Act to allow the extension of the expiry date for the Dietary Supplements Regulations by pushing it out by five years. The reason for this is that, as has been said, it’s due to expire in March of this year, and if we allow this to expire, then it would mean that perhaps—myself, for instance: I could decide I want to come up with some kind of supplement and promise the world that it would deliver all these amazing miracle effects, and there’d be nothing to regulate me—[Interruption]—that’s right—to say that it was true or not true.

We’ve heard about the time frame. The time frame has now been decided upon as five years, and that gives time for the new regime to be developed and a maximum of two years to implement it. Barbara Kuriger talked about it taking too long, but I would note in the first reading speech that at that time, Barbara Kuriger said that—and I quote—“I would like to congratulate the Minister, in a time of COVID-19, for giving at least one industry certainty—at least 5½ years’ certainty—when actually most businesses are not sure what’s happening tomorrow or next week.” So I would take from that, at that time, that the member supported the 5½ years because it allowed the industry certainty.

Anyway, as I said earlier, by having the regulations in place, it does ensure that supplements cannot say that they will do things that they are unable to do. It will provide a certain level of safety for us all, because we have heard that supplements can be dangerous if you take the wrong dosage, etc., etc., and, yes, while we’re going to wait for five years for this to be implemented, it is important that we get it right and that we take the time. As Barbara Kuriger mentioned, it’s long overdue—1985, I think, the previous regulations came out. So times have changed, but we do need to make sure we get it right because people’s health and safety is involved here. So, without further ado, I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I didn’t sit on the select committee that heard this bill, but I’d just like to highlight that it is an important bill. But it’s actually remarkable in its simplicity because it’s only got two clauses, essentially. Well, it’s got more than two clauses, but essentially the working clauses basically say that in this section, 1 March 2021 is replaced with 1 March 2026—that’s the working part of the bill.

So what the bill does is it extends the Dietary Supplements Regulations 1985 for another five years. As we’ve heard, that’s going to give us time to develop further regulations around this area, which is incredibly important both for consumers but also thinking about our export markets.

So what do the underlying regulations actually do? Well, there’s quite a few things that are really important. The first one is it sets maximum daily dosages, because what it stipulates is that you should manufacture these supplements in such a way that a dose doesn’t exceed the recommended daily dietary allowance, and that makes a lot of sense that you’re not actually running the risk of creating toxicity with your dosages.

The second thing, though, is it says you’ve got to have clear labelling, and that also includes weight, so that people know exactly what’s in it, and why that’s important—I’ll get to that in a moment.

Then the third thing is it says you’ve actually got to tell the consumer what the dosage is, and that’s how many pills you’ve got to take or supplements you’ve got to take, and how often.

Then finally, you’re not allowed to make any misleading statements or therapeutic claims. So you can’t say, “If you take this it will reduce your risk of cancer.”, or “This will cure cancer.” You’ve actually got to not make any claims but say that this is a supplement. And, again, that’s incredibly important for consumers knowing what they’re taking.

So why are these regulations important? Why do we need to maintain them? The first one is consumers do need to know what’s in their product. It surprised me, actually—I didn’t realise—but a lot of multivitamins don’t actually contain iron, and that’s actually quite important if you’re looking for an iron supplement that’ll do something else. So what it means for consumers is that they need to get their glasses out and actually look at the back of the package if they want to know exactly what they’re taking.

But another thing that it’s really important to have that labelling there for is in the case of accidental overdose. This is where in my previous job I used to do a lot of reporting on child health. We used to report on the child poisoning statistics, and you looked at the age curve, because every year a small number of kids are coming in to hospital having taken something. Usually about one year of age or two years of age is where we hit the peak in terms of numbers. Often when I was working in A & E, it was that story where a child had gone to stay at some elderly relatives, and they’d found what they thought were lollies but they were actually some pills. The first thing that you want to do when you get a child in to A & E—the question is, first: what’ve they taken? So if you’ve got something clearly labelled with what’s in it, you can look up or refer to the poisons centre to know what you’ve got to do.

Then the second thing is how many pills are missing. If, obviously, that’s labelled clearly and then you can count, you’ve got a sense of what the dosage is. So, really important in terms of accidental overdose and poisoning to have that clear labelling.

Then the third thing is about interactions. Because while you’re not allowed to say, in terms of therapeutic claims, “This can do X, Y, and Z.”, a lot of these supplements actually do have activity where you can interact with medication. This is often important where you’ve got people that are medically fragile, they’re taking a lot of different medications, and then they go and take a supplement, and it can interact and throw everything out of whack. And so, again, it’s really important when you’re trying to figure out what’s going on here, to take a good look at the history, in terms of whether you are taking any supplements; if so, let’s have a look at the packet, and then you can go through and figure out what’s actually going on.

What happens if these regulations lapse, because they are incredibly important? So what does happen is then it comes in under just the normal laws applying to food, and those are not particularly fit for purpose, particularly around those areas where you’ve got the potential for supplements to have potential health effects. It’s important that we don’t end up with these products that could cause harm. So we do need a fit for purpose regulatory regime. What we are going to be doing is extending this for a period of five years, and, as the Minister said, we don’t anticipate it would take five years to do this. But as with anything that we put in place, you’ve got to develop the regulations but then you’ve got to go out and consult on them and make sure that people have had their chance to have their say. You’ve got to refine them in response, and then you’ve got to allow a time for transition. So what the aim is here is to allow five years so we don’t have to keep going back and extending it again, which is going to take up our time, but just get on and do that.

So this is an important bill. What it’ll do is it provides certainty for those manufacturing, those supplying, that they’ve got the certainty of the market over the next five years, but also certainty for consumers that they’re going to have a regime in place, and, also, that they’ll know what they’re taking. So an incredibly important bill but really simple, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you Madam Speaker. It’s a bit crazy that we have to do a bill that only extends it by five years—and as my colleague said, is a one-page bill, effectively—which is just a reflection of the incompetence of the Government that we have at the moment. They’ve had three years in Government, they haven’t been able to do a thing, they’ve taken their time, it runs out of time and then we are forced, in this Parliament, to do legislation like this when we should do the real things that New Zealanders need—around housing, around law and order, and those issues that should be dealt with rather than following up on their mistakes.

One of my colleagues actually felt that we should declare an emergency in this situation because they’ve declared emergencies on everything else. Why don’t they do one on this? This is the waste of time that this Parliament has been put through because of the inefficiency and incompetence of that group of people over there in Government. And they don’t even know what they’re talking about, because the fine article that my colleague Barbara Kuriger referred to finishes with this line saying that the Ministry of Health has done the policy work on new modern regulations, and we understand it’s ready to go. They’ve done it. It’s there, with the Ministry of Health—it’s sitting there. Yet we get from the Minister in the chair saying that they have nothing suitable to replace it with.

The last speaker said, “We need five years to develop the regulations.” They’ve actually done the work. It’s sitting there. They don’t even know it’s sitting there. The submitters actually said that they know it’s there; it’s been done. And the Labour Party need another five years to work out whether or not they want to bring it to this House. That is the incompetence that we see. It’s the incompetence that we see in every part of their governance, whether it’s from building roads or building houses—they are an incompetent Government. They can’t do things and we have to debate a bill that reflects that incompetence. We give them another five years; we’ll be back here and doing it in two years’ time—with the National Party coming into Government, that will actually make it happen and we won’t have to wait for these clowns to actually do anything.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker; thank you. The Green Party supports the Food (Continuation of Dietary Supplements Regulations) Amendment Bill. I don’t propose to take up a lot of the House’s time, except to rebut Mr Bennett, because if National wants to get away from its image of having neglected major change when it was in Government, it should have done something then, rather than continuing to criticise now. The member also neglected to follow the speech of the Minister for Food Safety, who highlighted the economic importance of the dietary supplements industry. Last January, I was in Golden Bay with a new predator fence, which HealthPost had helped fund because of the quite substantial business that they have there in dispatching dietary supplements around Aotearoa.

So this is a small bill. It recognises Medsafe, which has had responsibility for dietary supplements and the regulations since 2010, when there was an explicit decision that that was more of a medical issue rather than a food safety issue because of the impacts of dietary supplements and interference with medications—sometimes. The regulations haven’t been adequately reviewed; there needs to be time for them to be reviewed. We need to ensure that businesses can continue and consumers can continue to have access to them. That’s why the Green Party doesn’t want the regulations to expire on 21 March, with no replacement. This bill ensures that those regulations can continue until that fuller review is done. We support it.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in support of the Food (Continuation of Dietary Supplements Regulations) Amendment Bill. I won’t exhaust a lot of oxygen with this one; I think we’re all in agreeance. The Food (Continuation of Dietary Supplements Regulations) Amendment Bill could hardly be construed as contentious legislation. The dietary supplements industry needs operational clarity. Obviously, to support its continuation in the absence of a more precise legal framework is something we need for certainty and clarity for consumers, and an extension for industry would do that.

It is abundantly clear to us in the ACT Party that there are far more pressing issues facing this Government and this House. Obviously, this Government’s fallen well behind in housing, crime, and the Resource Management Act. The fact that we’re even discussing what we all agree on is something of being farcical. Thus, the ACT Party would fully support the Food (Continuation of Dietary Supplements Regulations) Amendment Bill. We commend this to the House.

Look, I just want to take this opportunity to talk about my great-grandad, Norm Hewitt.

Now, Norm turned 101 in September, and for his birthday I took my good friend Greg Murphy down to see Norm, and we talked about his years and talked to him about what it is that gives him such good skin. Now, Grandad Norm, I can tell you, had less wrinkles than me, and he says to me, “Well, I take three supplements. I take deer velvet, I take bee pollen, and I take garlic.”

So I had a good look at what goes on with deer velvet, and I looked it up online, and there’s a good central Hawke’s Bay company producing the deer velvet, a growing business that’s been striving and striving for over a decade, nearly two. And he talks about healthy immunity and joints. And we’re talking about—

💬 Hon David Bennett: First speech is on deer velvet!

—ha, ha!—body stamina and these sorts of things that have kept my grandad alive and thriving.

And then I had another look at what goes on in bee pollen. Now, that’s a super food, and you wouldn’t want to deny my great-grandad Norm that sort of stuff for his antioxidants. And then we have bee pollen, that boosts the immunity, protects the heart, and gets him going every morning. Now, I can tell you there’s a few people in here who need a bit of Berocca. And I say to you, if we’re going to get through tonight, then that’s the sort of thing we’ve got to take.

I talked to another business owner in Hawke’s Bay today about the importance of this bill continuing. And I said, “Look, what are the sorts of supplements that politicians should be taking?” He said that we should all be taking magnesium. Who takes magnesium in the House? Does anyone take magnesium? It’s very, very good for a good night’s sleep, so that we can crack into the morning, when we’re going to meet across here in our select committee again, David Bennett. And that’s the sort of stuff that’s going to keep us going, isn’t it? It’s the Beroccas in the morning and the magnesium at night. And don’t forget about the collagen. How’s the hair looking, ladies? I mean, I tell you, with a house of five daughters, the collagen in the morning, in the coffee, in the Juicee and the smoothie—that’s the sort of stuff that’s going on.

Now, what would happen—what would happen—if we stopped this bill right now? Poor Grandad Norm. He’d be very confused. You wouldn’t do that to him, would you? How could you do that to my Grandad Norm? I’m sure he’ll be watching this and loving all the name out there I’m giving my grandad, and I tell you: if I could ever have skin like grandad—now, talk about my mother; she’s going to be 75 soon. It’s not just about the genes—you need those supplements, don’t you? And so that’s why we’ve got to continue with this bill, keep it going.

The other thing I was really, really impressed with, Mr Bennett, was you saying, “Labour, another five years.” Well, I’ll give you six or seven or nine years to keep us going on this side of the House, David Bennett.

So let’s be very, very clear: we want to make sure these supplements keep us pumping all the time as we keep going through. And what did I say: Beroccas in the morning; who’s going to do a Berocca in the morning? Who’s going to do a magnesium at night for a good night’s sleep so that I can sit down and enjoy the rest of this debate? I absolutely strongly go for this bill, and good old Grandad Norm: go to 102—and he wants to get to 105. And by then, guess what? This job will be done and we will have got it through the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is my first attempt at speaking in the House, and, well, I’d just like to say that it’s a fabulous opportunity because there’s quite simply zero substance to this bill. So as I meander my way through it, it should be—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Well, you certainly haven’t had the substance of the last speaker!

Ha! I haven’t begun, Mr Brownlee! My congratulations to the Minister for Food Safety on providing some certainty to producers. We’ve bandied around a few figures, but a $2.3 billion industry—at the rate this Government is spending money, Lord knows we do need to enable and encourage private enterprise to operate as profitability as it possibly can.

But it is important to protect this industry. As this House will appreciate, in this current economic environment any opportunity to grow business should be grabbed with both hands. Now, I hail from the mighty Selwyn electorate, and with all due respect to your own electorate, Madam Speaker, it is one of the primary producing superpowers of New Zealand; we are leading this country, I like to think, in our export recovery. So there are a number of producers within my own electorate who this bill will give some much-needed certainty to.

So too will the growing number of Kiwis who do supplement their diets, and I do have to put my hand up to the member over there, Anna Lorck: I do take magnesium and deer velvet and Berocca and fish oil. I know that for myself I do have a new-found appreciation for the regulations that oversee this industry.

But before the much-lauded new health product regime can be implemented, it is an important aspect of this extension to ensure that the ongoing regulation of labelling is ensured, because I for one have fallen foul to claims that they will make me taller, thinner, smarter, well rested, and thoroughly Zen. But it is clear from industry that they are only supporting this bill as a stopgap measure and that there is a clear demand for future regulation to bring standards in line with offshore markets so that we can grow our exports to them. In my time at my former role at Trade and Enterprise, I did see, time and time and time again, high-quality producers—things like mānuka and deer velvet—being knocked back from the lucrative markets offshore like China and the Middle East because of labelling and internal regulation here.

So, as my colleague over here referred, Natural Health Products New Zealand has made it clear to the Primary Production Committee that we do need to remove these export barriers by demonstrating that New Zealand does have world-class regulatory compliance in all its systems. So I would hope that that kind of feedback is taken on board as this bill progresses through the House and, indeed, the new regulatory policy is developed. Thank you.

Dr Duncan Webb—five minutes.

Madam Speaker, thank you. I rise in light of the fact that Te Paati Māori has chosen not to take a speaking slot, it appears, in this debate, but I really just want to endorse this bill. The Minister for Food Safety, obviously, is a medical doctor, as is Liz Craig, and they have explained the complex medical reasons as to why we want to know what is in our therapeutic products. But equally, from a consumer point of view, people are entitled to know what’s in it, what the strengths are, and what the therapeutic claims are, and to ensure that that can be regulated. This is, as the member for Selwyn said, a measure that is in place whilst a more enduring framework is designed, and I look forward to that, but it is a good measure, a necessary measure. I commend it to the House.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. It is my pleasure to rise and take my first call in the House in 2021. I want to acknowledge the Minister for Food Safety for bringing this bill to the House and giving the industry certainty. I also want to really acknowledge the people and organisations who took the time to make submissions on this bill. As has been discussed tonight, this bill seeks to extend the expiry of the Food (Continuation of Dietary Supplements Regulations) Amendment Bill, which will amend the Food Act to extend the expiry from 28 February 2020 to 1 March 2026.

As has been canvassed tonight, the dietary supplements can include a range of health products, including vitamins, minerals, herbs, fish oils—all of which can be consumed to support individuals’ wellbeing and health. It’s an important bill because without the regulations that we are seeking to extend, the general principles of the Food Act would become the primary regulation or the way that the dietary supplements would then be regulated. This would, unfortunately, provide uncertainty for producers and consumers because, as has been canvassed already tonight, it would mean that producers are no longer required to have doses or state what’s in their products. So it creates uncertainty, but it also creates a risk that products will become unsafe, because the general principles of the Food Act aren’t specific enough to regulate dietary supplements or respond to the particular challenges associated with dietary supplements.

It’s important that we extend it by five years to give time, as has been mentioned, for the new bespoke regime to be put in place and allow a transition period. It’s important because this is a $2.3 billion industry, as has already been canvassed tonight, and we need to give that certainty, especially after the last 12 months that we’ve all endured, to producers and to consumers that what they are getting in the supermarket or their local health food shop is a quality product that has been through proper regulation.

This bill has been generally supported by submitters, including one submitter saying that “We appreciate the certainty that the Food (Continuation of Dietary Supplements Regulations) Amendment Bill will provide our industry.”

So with that, I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. You would wonder what we’re doing taking all this time up on a bill that consists of 76 words, but I want to congratulate the Minister for Food Safety on her first piece of legislation through the House. She must be very proud of it. I’m sure it’s not something she’ll want to remember, but none the less, I guess, it’s her first piece of legislation to come to the House. It won’t be one that’ll stick in her mind.

I’m not a great advocate for dietary supplements. I take all of mine out of the bottle or the paddock, and I think that’s where you should take them from, but I’ve got to tell you a little story, because we heard a couple of stories earlier on, about a dietary supplement that I did once take. [Interruption] Ha, ha! And it’s not what you think, David Bennett! It is not what you think.

💬 Hon David Bennett: Did it work?

No, it didn’t, and I’m going to explain it. It was a thing called a bee venom—disappointing for you, I know. It was a bee venom, and the funny thing was, it was prescribed for me by someone who’s very strong on dietary supplements, and the next morning, having taken the bee venom, I couldn’t move. And the funny thing about bee venom is if you’re allergic to bee stings, it doesn’t have a very good effect on you. That is the only experience I’ve ever had of taking a dietary supplement, and I won’t be taking another one, but I am married to someone who takes all sorts of dietary supplements. I think, as my colleague on the right of me said earlier, she expects it to make her taller, slimmer—all those things. I don’t think any of them have happened, but I’m sure she’ll live longer than I will!

But just on the topic of this bill, there are some stats in this industry which somewhat stagger me, and that’s the size of the industry in New Zealand, or the scale of this thing. Some $2.3 billion—or in excess of $2.3 billion—worth of products are traded in New Zealand on the basis of what we call a dietary supplement, which I think’s staggering, but the other staggering figure is it’s grown by 10 percent a year for the last six or seven years. So it’s quite an interesting industry, and one, I think, that obviously is going to grow significantly more. Whether we like it or not, when you’re dealing with products like bee venom, there’s clearly a need for some regulation or some legislation that controls that. I think also, from the New Zealand perspective, it’s got great potential as an export industry, and we’ve heard talk of things like deer velvet and those types of product, which are clearly worth a lot of money to New Zealand, and definitely need to be protected in the world market.

So there’s some reason for this piece of legislation extending the old piece of legislation—the Dietary Supplements Regulations—which, interestingly, is 35 years old. We’re now extending it by another five years, to give us time to produce a new bill that will be more relevant to New Zealand. That’s my lot, Mr Speaker.

Mr Speaker, first of all I want to congratulate you on being appointed as the Deputy Speaker. I rise today as the third qualified medical doctor on this side of the House to speak on the Food (Continuation of Dietary Supplements Regulations) Amendment Bill.

💬 Jamie Strange: And I’ve got an appointment booked in after this!

That’s right! I want to acknowledge the two people who have spoken before me who are qualified to speak on health—first is the Minister Ayesha Verrall, who’s done a really good job on this bill; and second is Dr Liz Craig, who is the chair of the Health Committee.

The demand for health and wellness products in New Zealand and overseas is quite high—trust me when I say that. As someone who’s worked as a general practitioner in the community, nobody can say this with more confidence than I can. Before I move forward, I want to acknowledge David Bennett, who was just talking about clowns. Jamie and I were just referring back to the last time we saw you in Hamilton, where we were all dressed up as clowns at the Christmas parade.

Going back to the point, dietary supplements are products that provide specific nutrients or substances that supplement the diet, usually in the form of capsules, tablets, liquids, or powder. Many of us here in New Zealand will have used at least one of these products—one of the members just talked about using a blue pill on the blue side—

💬 Kieran McAnulty: Ha, ha!

—somebody get the joke?—products which include vitamin and mineral supplements, omega 3, fish oil, and glucosamine tablets. Normally, the regulations that govern the composition and labelling of dietary supplements include some specific risk-mitigating measures, such as maximum daily doses for specific vitamins and minerals and prohibiting misleading statements and therapeutic claims. Without the proposed amendment, the regulation will expire on 1 March 2021. As a result, dietary supplements will then be regulated by general laws which are applied to food. These general laws do not address the specific health risks associated with dietary supplements. One likely impact would be an increase in the risk of unsafe and unsuitable dietary products in the market, but also a large proportion of dietary supplements sold at present would likely be non-compliant with the general food laws and would not be allowed to be sold. This impacts a lot of businesses and consumers.

I reflect back on my time working as a doctor, and I was talking about glucosamine recently. For some of my patients who I have had the chance of looking after, they really swear by products like glucosamine. It helps their mobility; it helps their joint pain. Can you imagine if one of these people didn’t get their medication for a day or a week or a month because we didn’t pass this bill? The bill proposes to extend the expiry date of the current dietary supplement regulations of 1985 by five years. The bill will achieve this by amending the two sections of the Food Act 2014 that set an expiry date of the regulation. The expiry date in both sections will be amended from 1 March 2021 to March 2026. Through regulation oversight, we can then provide confidence and assurance to consumers that these products are safe and do what they say they do.

It is estimated that in New Zealand, the natural products industry is worth $2.3 billion on last count, in 2019, which is a growth of 64 percent. By extending these regulations, we will secure the ongoing growth and sustainability of the industry and make sure that our patients have some sort of guarantee that they will continue to receive the medications that help to make a positive difference in their lives. It also makes sure that businesses have time to comply with any further changes in the law—whenever they may be. At the moment, the laws that are present are working really well. One of the members pointed out that in the last 20 years, there has been a call for regulation change. Well, I just want to mention that in the last 20 years, there has been a different Government as well, which hasn’t really done much about it. So it can’t all be just somebody in the last three years changing it.

So I would like to say that the bill that’s been proposed by Minister Verrall, which is being supported by everybody in this House, should go ahead. Thank you.

Can I remind members that when the Speaker declares the vote, if they are voting the way that the Speaker calls a vote, there’s no need to call a party vote. In this instance, under the Standing Orders, because all parties have agreed to it, that is not a vote. So the Ayes have it.

Bill read a second time.