Ardern Shane: Food Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Shane: Food Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 13 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17753. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki - King Country): It is a privilege and a pleasure to speak on the Food Bill today. This bill as the Minister for Food Safety outlined and as others have said replaces or amends a number of Acts: the Food Act 1981 the Food Hygiene Regulations 1974 the Animal Products Act 1999 and the Wine Act 2003. So it is a very significant piece of work.As others have said it had a very very long gestation period but the issue at stake here and the reason why as much attention has been paid to it over such a long time is reputational. New Zealand is an export nation of food. In fact we are unique in the world in terms of the dependence on protein food exports and in terms of the size of that export return on our economy. I do not know of another nation like that and we are unique in the world in that regard to the best of my knowledge. Reputation is absolutely essential and solid legislative protection around the quality and the guarantee of that quality is absolutely essential to that reputation.The Primary Production Committee was faced with an enormous task of trying to balance on the one hand the major export companies that export food and on the other hand the small fund-raising calf days Lions and Rotary Club fund-raisers with sausage sizzles in front of The Warehouse farmers’ markets and other such. Even marae derive a fair amount of their income nowadays from the sale or the preparation of food. So a wide sector of society is concerned about what needed to be put in place in regard to having some certainty that food was safe but on the other hand one would not want to be over-bureaucratic and require the high level of food handling certification that is necessary obviously for a commercial restaurant or other food outlet.The committee was charged with the task of how you come up with something that covers that whole area of concern and I think on balance that we have arrived at a place that is far better than where we started in regard to that. So small outlets or small organisations that are fund-raising such as voluntary groups church groups marae etc. will now be able to sell food with a far lower level of compliance and have a far lower level of cost than they have had in the past and at the other end of the spectrumparticularly in light of the whey protein concentrate case the regulatory framework and the power that the director-general has in regard to recall has been enhanced. So there has been a substantial I guess piece of movement in regard to where we were prior to that.The clearance of imported food has been something of a debating point in New Zealand in recent times in the media particularly with the growth in our exports to Asian areas and China so being able to create a regime where foreign nations have total faith that our systems are robust and our traceability is second to none—and that traceability stems right back to the farm gate or to the origin of the food—has set us aside as world leaders. So this piece of legislation will when it is enacted enhance that. I have no doubt about that. It will be and is being looked at as other international jurisdictions look to enhance their own food safety legislation as something that will be seen as a leading area for people to go and look at.The committee was provided with the Supplementary Order Paper that the Minister spoke of Supplementary Order Paper 278. This Supplementary Order Paper was bigger in size—in fact I think it was over 400 pages—than the original bill itself was. You would have to sort of wonder at how the original drafting could lead to such an outcome. Well as the previous speaker Damien O’Connor said the original drafting of course started under the previous Government so that may shed some light on the explanation for that. But equally it has been a fast-moving vehicle you might say in terms of where our trading has moved from and to the kind of extra testing that is now required and the more sophisticated testing systems we have that are able to pick up different contaminants that we were not able to pick up 100 years ago 50 years go or even 10 years ago. This is an area where technology absolutely comes to fore. Science is a leading area. The number of ingredients that now can go into some of the more finely processed nutraceuticals pharmaceuticals and foodstuffs is such that no one would have dreamt of it so many years ago. To be able to keep pace with that is always going to be a challenge for this Parliament. I think to a large extent this Food Bill has achieved that.I also want to place on record our thanks for the forbearance I guess of the officials who certainly were worked hard through this process. Every time they came back we had another series of questions for them so I want to acknowledge the work that they did. Also I want to acknowledge my parliamentary colleagues on the Primary Production Committee. There was very good cross-party support to make progress on this. The Hon Damien O’Connor mentioned the bipartisan—you might say multi-partisan—approach that was taken to this. I will be interested in hearing the contribution from the Greens in a few moments. But overall there was support from the Greens on most aspects of the bill. There were some concerns raised. I am sure we will hear about them in a moment. Overall the committee worked very well together. Of course there was a member from the New Zealand First Party there Richard Prosser who was there by leave of the committee and he made a sound contribution during the process also. I acknowledge them and thank them.My own colleagues of course—Ian McKelvie and Colin King—were both substantial contributors to the process. Our select committee has the unprecedented situation in Parliament in the time I have been here of having a Deputy Speaker as a member of the select committee. Of course he is someone who has served in Parliament for a long time and brings a lot of parliamentary experience to it. I think the bill will enhance New Zealand food safety and I look forward to its passage through the House.