O'Connor Damien: Food Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Connor Damien: Food Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 14 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17863. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): Part 3 of the Food Bill as speakers have said previously relates to food imported for the purpose of sale. On reading through all the clauses here they basically refer to administration and administrative requirements. Not much of it actually refers to the food itself. It perhaps is part of the design but given the absence of country-of-origin labelling the assumption will be that when the food comes into the country it is safe. Nothing in Part 3 specifies that clearly. The person importing the food can be suspended or have their licence suspended if the food imported by the importer may pose a risk to human life or public health or there has been serious failure of the operations or there have been other matters that cast doubt on the safety and suitability of the food. That is in clause 113(1)(a) and (b). That is almost the sole reference to the food itself. The rest of the provisions here relate to the registration of individuals and what they must do the chief executive’s requirements around that their ability to refuse to register etc. Let us come back to the heart of the matter and that is imported food. Is it safe? We as a country export food and all the growers all the people involved have to meet very high standards to export food from this country. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for all other countries importing food from us or exporting food to us so we are reliant on systems. We have some authority within our own country but have very little authority in other countries to ensure that their systems are robust. There are big issues around biosecurity none of which are referenced in this particular part of the Food Bill. The Ministers may say that that is not necessary. I however think that it is and while the committee has kicked these things around there are still questions. I do not think any piece of legislation is perfect. We are learning every single day in this area of trade and its importance to us. We import things like pork from Canada where the porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome is endemic. There is a real risk of biosecurity not direct food safety as such but it certainly does affect or has the potential to affect our food systems in this country because the syndrome leads to ill-health in pigs andthat inevitably leads to at times the slaughter of animals that are not appropriate for human consumption. When importing pork from Canada we have to trust their system to deliver us pork from healthy pigs. That is an issue of trust and one that is not always delivered on I have to say from other countries. Garlic for example—we import garlic believe it or not bizarre as it is. An onion fly was found in a garlic clove in a house in Nelson. It is a real pest for this country. Obviously it has come in in larvae form and was part of a biosecurity risk but it did question the systems of delivering to us as an importing country safe healthy and certified food. It was supposed to be certified as clear of all biosecurity risks just as it would have to be certified as healthy food. If there is a systems failure for one thing there can be systems failures for other things. We import a huge amount of meat into this country—a lot of it through Progressive Enterprises the Australian supermarket chain I have to say; Countdown and the like. They are importing meat out of Australia. We assume that it is safe meat although the Australians have been known before to export kangaroo meat as beef. Although I do not want to challenge the Australians directly there are other countries exporting food to us and I think we need to double-check their systems. The ability in Part 3 of the bill for the director-general to cease registration of any importing body company or individual is essential. The chief executive may do that. But I hope that the powers that we have offered through this part of the bill are extensive enough to say to someone—where for example the garlic imported into this country delivered a real biosecurity risk—that that allows us to go back to that importer and to cease imports immediately until the importer can prove that their systems are robust. I have to say that we have as the Opposition challenged the Minister to halt imports where we have identified biosecurity risks. The Government has been reluctant to do that. They say: “Oh no. Things are OK. We don’t want to upset our trade people and our negotiations.” Well sometimes we are going to have to harden up. Sometimes we are going to have to make a call and suspend an importer’s licence immediately if we think there is a biosecurity risk or in this case here a food safety risk. We have been reluctant to do that as a country. We have been reluctant and I think we have to take a tougher stance in this area. As I say country-of-origin labelling would better enable consumers to identify that food that is imported and in their minds might carry a higher risk than the food that is produced in New Zealand which we believe should be of lower risk particularly in the area of food safety. We pride ourselves in our systems but the Government is not prepared to—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member but the time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: We are speaking on Part 3 of the Food Bill in relation to food imported for the purpose of sale. This I guess refers to the growing amount of food that we are importing into this country which many Kiwis think is quite bizarre really given that we produce some of the finest and safest food in the world. But we do have our borders open so that we can then reciprocate and export our food to those countries. So making sure that we have a good system in place is important. The Primary Production Committee has looked at all the issues here and has intended through its changes and improvements I guess to have a fair system that allows people to bring in food. But the specific references here are to systems that we hope are robust and that we trust are being met and implemented when people put up their plan to import food. We want their assurances that it will be safe food and ultimately that there is a check in the country of origin that the food has indeed been produced in a safe way.I made reference to the importation of particular products like pork for example out of Canada where the Government has been in a legal battle for some time with the Pork Industry Board. It has spent probably close to $1 million trying to defend its right to challenge the changing import health standards that relate primarily to biosecurity but indirectly to the possibility that pork in that country because of disease has been produced from pigs that are not entirely healthy. We have to rely on the systems in Canada to deliver that pork to the border and trust that everything has met the basic requirements. We probably can have some confidence that in a country like Canada that has occurred but there are many other countries from which we import food where I am not sure we could be quite as confident. So these provisions place a duty on the importer to make sure that all the applicable requirements of the Act are met. It allows the chief executive of the Ministry for Primary Industries or in the case of the new Labour Government of the food safety authority that we will form and set up once again to cancel the registration of any importer who does not meet the basic requirements. There are in clause 113 mandatory suspension provisions that relate directly to the food and its risk to human life or public health. But other than that all the other provisions in Part 2 relate to systems and an obligation for the importer to meet those systems.