Williams PotoPOTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): I am not a member of the Primary Production Committee but I do have a passing interest I guess in matters of quality and quality systems so it is in that regard that I am going to make my contribution this evening. This bill is I think very interesting because not only does it look to improve the food safety system through the recommendations came out of the inquiry with regard to the Fonterra botulism scare but it actually attempts to align three particular Acts with regard to the food safety system to ensure that we hopefully come out with something that will better protect human health ensure our reputation for good food safety qualities and ensure that we are a supplier of safe and suitable food both here in New Zealand and overseas. With regard to that botulism scare which did precipitate the Government inquiry from which came the recommendations that fed into the development of this particular piece of legislation it is an important thing to note that within the explanatory note of this bill it talks a lot about reputation. We are a country of course that is heavily reliant on our ability to produce safe food in good quantities for the world markets in particular. Our reputation is everything. We know that when there have been periods when there have been scares such as what precipitated this particular piece of legislation they do sit in the minds of consumers overseas—their ability to continue to trust us as producers to produce good safe quality food. We only have to look to other countries that are kind of snapping at our heels in terms of wanting to take those markets from us. So our reputation across the globe has to be everything in that regard. With regard to reputation there is no doubt that one of the most difficult periods for us occurred with regard to the scare around contaminated milk powder particularly the milk formula for children in China where we saw distressing stories of how children were getting really sick and worse. You cannot come back easily from a dent in your reputation like that. We know that with regard to feeding the most vulnerable like our children we have a situation just up in Havelock North where our water supply has been contaminated. We are very scared for not only our children but our elderly people with regard to them being able to be well in terms of being able to consume the water up there. I really feel for the community up there. How many—there are 3000 I think is the latest figure. So we are very concerned for their well-being particularly our elderly and our children. So I can understand how easy it is for a country's reputation to be damaged. But there are mechanisms in place and this bill seeks to align the three Acts—the Animal Products Act the Food Act and the Wine Act—to ensure that we have got some consistency over our food safety process. It also gives us an opportunity to examine some of the quality systems within that. There are four key features of this particular bill. There is the requirement for the risk-based plans to be supplied to the regulator and for the submission for review of the relevant verification agencies. What that means is that producers need to be developing plans and those agencies that will review those plans need to be verified by the regulator. That is great. That is the standard quality process I guess across whatever industry you are in. It is good that we are taking a best-practice approach to quality intervention in this particular regard. It also has the requirement for traceability to ensure that when problems do happen you can safely recall—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. 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.POTO WILLIAMS: Tēnā koe Mr Deputy Speaker. Just before the dinner break I was commenting on the four key features of this piece of legislation—primarily the requirement for the development of risk plans and the verification of the agency that would monitor those plans. The second part is traceability so that if there are any food safety incidents there is an ability to recall defective products easily and also trace back to source so that any of the issues can be mitigated quite quickly. The third aspect is really about accountability and the regulator here—this bill indicates that they hold prime accountability even though the agency's role will be in acting to ensure verification of the various standards as developed by the regulator. The last key aspect is standardisation of compliance of the methods across all of the food safety system. So it has the bones of the development of a relatively robust quality system in those terms. I just want to make some comments about what we might be looking to the select committee to determine and about some other aspects for it to look at. Here I want to quote my colleague the Hon Damien O'Connor when he talked about the whole debacle having occurred because food safety testing by Crown research institute AgResearch and the oversight by AsureQuality had failed and while the mistake occurred Fonterra was relying on advice from Government entities that were not adequately resourced. What the Hon Damien O'Connor was also referring to was the establishment of an independent food safety authority. Here the select committee has an opportunity to really look at the viability of that and I would strongly suggest that—particularly in cases such as the one that precipitated the development of this particular bill—the nature of independence for a food safety authority would be very useful. The cautionary tale is of course the cases where food safety has been quite clearly compromised. I spoke in my earlier contribution about how damaging that is to our reputation. The damage to our reputation does not go away quickly. It takes some work to rebuild trust in our food safety systems after those kinds of events. In terms of the development of a quality system I think the bones are very much there but there are some questions that need to be asked at the select committee. We would certainly be looking to explore the independent nature possibly of a food safety authority. We would be looking at reviewing other monitoring processes either through other jurisdictions or through other sectors. There are lots of good and robust quality systems that are there that can be used as comparatives when the select committee is looking at this bill. As I said at the beginning of my contribution I am not a member of this select committee but have a keen interest in ensuring that we develop really good quality systems across the range of our food safety environment because it is very important that we manage to retain our reputation as a safe food producer and it is very important for our economy going forward. Thank you. I commend the bill to the House.