Browning SteffanSTEFFAN BROWNING (Green): Speaking to the Food Safety Law Reform Bill it was an interesting bill to work through in the Primary Production Committee. Quite a lot of aspects of food safety and food labelling were traversed there. This focuses on the main food safety Acts: the Animal Products Act the Food Act and the Wine Act. As stated in the report the bill is to improve their alignment operation and design to better protect human health and maintain and strengthen New Zealand's reputation as a supplier of safe and suitable food both domestically and internationally." Really that is what this bill is primarily about: it is a reputational issue because of the whey botulism issue.So what does the bill actually achieve? It reinforces rather than achieves a lot. It reinforces the need for traceability and transparency. I cannot see where it has significantly changed what exists but it did mean a thorough going-over and our trading partners should feel confident that we have refreshed we have gone through—and our processes are somewhat the better for it albeit they were pretty good to start with in some areas. The Green Party will support it. The Green Party also thinks food safety should be separated out from the Ministry for Primary Industries so that it can operate way more impartially in terms of true food safety. Hopefully very soon a future Government will achieve that.One issue that did have some contention—albeit we had no minority views from the select committee—was about having the operators and verifiers hold full copies of risk-based food safety plans and programmes. So many clauses were removed that were about those food safety plans and changes in management actually being sent through to the regulators the enforcers at the time of the change. You would think with a bill like this that you would do that—that that was the point of it. But they were removed. So some of us as it was reported do have concerns about that—that the verification agencies should be holding that stuff immediately. For those in the electronic age—you know we have got tablets and stuff. Nearly everybody has those; some small cottage industries might not. However the big actors that this was really aimed at do. They could do that at the touch of a button. For some reason the ministry and the Government chose to let them off on that point.In the organic sector which I have a history in if we want to change something we have to send that through to the certifier before we actually do it. We cannot just go changing it. There is some flexibility in there but you have to let the verification agency or the certifier know that you are making that change so you know that if something happens and you need to do a recall you want the agencies to know now not 48 hours later. So the bill slips up in terms of some of the potential that it could have had.There are requirements to consult and that is all very good. One thing we traversed and it was seen as being out of scope was country-of-origin labelling. There was one of those moments of serendipity in there in that even when my last little effort to try to get an amendment on country-of-origin labelling put in there was being turned down the members' ballot was drawn and we got the Consumers' Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill out. So it has been very good to see the House—apart from one David Seymour—support that bill and we are working on that now.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! That is not part of this bill. STEFFAN BROWNING: It is very much in the report back by the select committee that country-of-origin labelling was well traversed and those points were considered there.The compliance requirements for small food producers was the next part that was very well covered and we have heard a bit more of that. The small food producers—Biddy has been mentioned; a number of us have been on that property. The people from Mount Eliza Cheeses came and showed us that a French cheese could be imported and it would not have had anywhere near the testing that these small cheese producers are being put through. They are having to pay the compliance costs here in New Zealand these small cheese producers and yet the French stuff can come in through equivalence-type programmes. The cheeses can be on the same shop shelf right next to each other and have huge differences in what the requirements are. We are very grateful—we have a new Minister for Food Safety who is I think hearing those submitters and we look to see some change in that area in the near future.Another thing that was brought up was the labelling of genetically modified and radiated food and that was reported back as well. Currently under regulations genetically modified food is meant to be labelled. However we have found that the Ministry for Primary Industries and its predecessor the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry have not monitored or enforced that legal requirement since 2003. I am introducing as we speak a Supplementary Order Paper putting in a little bit more encouragement to the chief executive and the ministry effectively to ensure that that actually does happen because consumers want that choice. We have found that that is in scope and so it will say that the chief executive must ensure regular and effective monitoring and enforcement of food-labelling requirements for irradiated foods and genetically modified foods. For the genetically modified foods it is just not happening. For irradiated foods because it is a more recent introduction of a food there is still a bit of labelling happening but that is drifting away as well.So that Supplementary Order Paper to amend the Food Safety Law Reform Bill is intended to make it a requirement for the chief executive to regularly and extensively monitor and enforce those requirements as they are in the food standards 1.5.2 and also 1.5.3 in terms of the irradiated food. Consumers need clear labelling to make informed purchasing choices because there is no point in putting this stuff into legislation and regulation if they are just totally ignored. I am hoping as we move through with the country-of-origin labelling part that of course once it is in it will actually be monitored and enforced. Consumers and the public need to be able to have confidence in our food safety laws and our labelling laws to make the laws good and meaningful.The Food Safety Law Reform Bill is focused on measures to maintain and strengthen New Zealand's reputation as a supplier of safe and suitable food with a particular focus on industry monitoring compliance and availability of information—and that is where the labelling comes in—and the design of delegated legislation. So that Supplementary Order Paper is to make explicit certain monitoring compliance and availability of information to make sure that it occurs as intended under section 18 of the Food Act 2014. I will catch up with the Minister to win over his support on that Supplementary Order Paper and I assume that across the House we will get support for that.So the Greens will support this bill as I have stated. There are some shortcomings and there are some improvements and traceability and transparency should be the better for it. Thank you."