Goodhew Jo: Annual Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoodhew Jo: Annual Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 29 April 2015. Volume:704;Page:3055. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon JO GOODHEW (Minister for Food Safety):I rise to take this call not only as Minister for Food Safety but also as the Associate Minister for Primary Industries with responsibility for forestry. I would like to acknowledge the Primary Production Committee chair Ian McKelvie and the other members of the committee. On reading the annual review report from this year there are a number of things that I want to touch on in the course of my short address this evening.The first of those is the 1080 threat and the second of those is going to be food safety in general because members of the Opposition certainly need to hear a wee bit more about putting this in context. It is always quite amazing to me how memories of the Opposition members fade in terms of what was present at the time when they were the Government so I want to talk a little bit about what our Government has been doing.Let us start with 1080. It was a criminal threat and we must always remember it was a criminal threat to contaminate formula and other products. It was a heinous threat and to the most vulnerable: the babies who would be drinking formula. The potential for harm—in fact the potential death of babies—really struck at the heart of New Zealand. But from the time that threat was received the Ministry of Primary Industries worked alongside the New Zealand police who were investigating this matter. The Ministry of Primary Industries brought into being a complete response. It had certainly learnt a lot from the whey protein concentrate 80 inquiry and the recommendations out of that and was able to put up a response that meant it looked at the whole of the supply chain.I will refute one of the statements that was made by a member of the Primary Production Committee—well it appeared to be through the report—that they were concerned about the fact that there would be compromises and divergent interests within the Ministry of Primary Industries in terms of dealing with an incident like that. Far from this—far from this—what the response to the 1080 threat showed was that the Ministry of Primary Industries had the interests and the safety of the consumer absolutely front and centre. It showed that the ministry was able to work right across the supply chain of those products in order to work with the sector in order to work right from the farm gate where the milk was being collected all the way through to processing through the retail chain and then on to our export markets. It was able to prepare the whole of that supply chain for far better security so that we could be able to stand in front of the public of New Zealand and say that this product is now likely because of the security on our supply chain to be safer than it was before.I want to move on to what we learnt from the whey protein concentrate 80 inquiry. It is very sad to think that the Opposition members think that all of the woes that were exposed by the various inquiries after the whey protein concentrate 80 incident were present only under the National Government. How short-sighted that is. We heard the former Associate Minister talk about the fact that this was all down to National. The member simply must be joking. There are things that have come out of the whey protein concentrate 80 inquiry. We now have a Food Safety Science and Research Centre where the business plan is currently being constructed. We have a Food Safety and Assurance Advisory Council. We have had two traceability reports. We are rolling that out across not just dairy but also the rest of the food sector as well. You see this country now understands how important traceability is because of the false alarm over botulism and the inquiries that were happening subsequent to that.So there is quite a lot of work under the food safety portfolio that I can tell you the Ministry of Primary Industries is turning itself to alongside the fact that unlike before the portfolio came under the Ministry of Primary Industries we are now seeing increasing numbers of prosecutions for food that is not safe for our local New Zealanders to be consuming. What we require in order to export what is $47 billion worth of food manufacturing receipts each year and $29.3 billion worth of food itself is for the other countries that take our food to trust us to see us as a reliable supplier of safe high-quality food and that depends on our reputation. I can tell this Committee that I believe our reputation is even better now than it was because of our transparency because of the work we are doing and because we share our knowledge as a nation around food safety processes with other countries that are developing countries.Steffan Browning: Mr Chair.