Browning Steffan: Food Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBrowning Steffan: Food Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 13 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17756. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STEFFAN BROWNING (Green):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. It is a pleasure to be speaking on the Food Bill. It has certainly had a long history and I have been involved with it from its gestation as the previous speaker Annette King termed it. Something like 10 years ago I was on the Food Safety Authority’s consumer forum when the bill was being introduced then. The Food Safety Authority under Andrew McKenzie and some other longstanding staff there put it to us as to what they wanted todo to modernise the Food Act. The primary part of that was admirable. It was to get a risk-based approach to food safety and there are some very good aspects in the bill around that. However the bill does go much further. It has to go further and it must have some variations from just the risk-based approach to food safety.I agree with the previous speaker that it has been a loss to have the New Zealand Food Safety Authority disappear into the Ministry for Primary Industries effectively out of sight for so many people. When I was spokesperson for the Soil and Health Association on that consumer forum we were concerned even then at the lack of independence that we saw in that Food Safety Authority and its absolute trade focus as opposed to having enough emphasis on the food safety of regular New Zealanders. But that has deteriorated by going back into the Ministry for Primary Industries. In time certainly the Green Party wants to see the Food Safety Authority be pulled back out of the Ministry for Primary Industries and be made even more independent than it suggested it was.When I came in as a member of Parliament in November 2011 there had been a very vigilant community watch on the progression of the Food Bill. There was huge concern. Some of it seemed to be misguided but it certainly was not all misguided. There were mistakes in the bill and there was certainly room for improvement. So in that summer of 2011-12 when I probably should have been taking a deep breath before Parliament started in February I was bombarded with emails from people with serious concern and I have done my best to follow through with them since. In fact when we had 500-odd submissions to the second Primary Production Committee consideration with the Food Bill and we did hear 19 of them some of them were seen as representative of much greater groups but there were some that still wanted to be heard. I met with nine of the 10 of those to make sure their voices were heard.There has been big concern and I am very pleased to see that at this point the Green Party will be voting for the Food Bill because of the significant changes that we have been able to have through good negotiation and discussion. I agree with Shane Ardern that the officials certainly worked hard having to accept and listen to our changes and suggestions. I met with successive Ministers like Kate Wilkinson on the bill. We discussed a number of things and she listened well. I was concerned about one change she was not going to make and it was good that with the following Minister we have managed to get some breakthrough. But between the two Ministers—Kate Wilkinson and Nikki Kaye—we have had some significant changes. One of them was that genetic modification which had been removed from the bill the first time round at the select committee has been reinstated into the Food Bill as a food safety issue and it seriously is a food safety issue. I will address that further at some stage.Food safety is now the overriding principle of the bill instead of just one of the factors to be considered because this seriously is a strongly trade-focused bill. But the fact that food safety is now the overriding principle we feel really helps in terms of protecting our sovereignty because sovereignty and the aspect of having international regulation landed on to New Zealand consumers and producers without coming past Parliament for example was a major concern for many of the submitters. One way of addressing that is ensuring that food safety has primacy. So it was great to see that change.However this bill is certainly not just about exports and high-volume trade. In saying that we do need to recognise that agriculture is 56.4 percent of our export value and we certainly need to make sure that food safety of those exports is held in absolute high regard internationally. That is also obviously a strong part of the bill. But it is not just about those. This also covers the sale swapping and gifting of food and we have achieved some changes to ensure that there is an expectation that the regulators—theMinister for Food Safety the Ministry for Primary Industries the local territorial authorities and other administrators—will be exempting from unnecessary bureaucracy the smaller producers who may have otherwise been caught with the bill.We have made sure that expectation is in the report from the select committee. The Minister has also agreed with me to meet and to look at how these exemptions might be done in the future to make sure there is not a ridiculous amount of bureaucracy on people who could not afford realistically even to pay the maybe $150 to the local territorial authority. You see there are people who may sell only a few garnishes. They may have some trees that come ripe once a year. For a couple of weeks they are picking apricots or apples or whatever they are doing and selling them at the gate but they also have a little bit of surplus and they want to sell that at the corner dairy maybe the organic store or maybe to a restaurateur. The bill actually catches them and says that they would have to go on to one of the food plans be audited and pay that basic fee—a bit over $100. But if they are selling only a few hundred dollars’ worth maybe even a couple of thousand dollars’ worth that is clearly a mischief and nonsensical.As I put to the Minister and as I put to the select committee friends and others our lives would be the lesser for it if we actually stalled people who supply those fantastic garnishes those extra herbs and those novel salad ingredients that make our restaurant experiences and our farmers market experiences somewhat more. That was a very important aspect to have sorted out in the bill. Right back in 2011 those were the sorts of things that people were concerned about. Home gardeners who bartered or swapped food or sold food directly to consumers and small growers felt that they were going to be wrapped up in the bill and as I say they would have been. Barter was a big issue and of course barter is a sale. That has been sorted out and there have been some major achievements there.I will also be introducing Supplementary Order Paper 449 to do with one aspect of the bill that was not caught up and that is regarding country-of-origin labelling as well. It is really good to see that the Labour Party after a long long time has come and acknowledged and seen that the international call is for country-of-origin labelling and New Zealand is one of the outliers from that. My Supplementary Order Paper 449 will be pointing out that single-component foods must have country-of-origin requirements. But any labelling laws and existing labelling laws must require regular monitoring and enforcement and we do need that to be enshrined in this legislation. I use as an example genetic-engineered labelling which has not been enforced for more than 10 years. We look forward to the Committee stage of this bill and we have certainly got with this great tome of a bill a lot to go through. Thank you.