Dyson Ruth: National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Dyson Ruth: National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 14 February 2012. Volume:677;Page:390. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) 
: 
 I begin the pleasurable task of speaking on the third reading of the National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill by acknowledging the Minister for Primary Industries the Hon David Carter. I want to express a little bit of disappointment in the House though having commended the Hon David Carter. He is exempted from this frustration.  
During the Committee stage of the debate—you Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch were actually present in the Chair at the time I recall—I mentioned to the Committee that David Carter and I had stood against each other in every election bar one since 1993 and I thought that may have been a record. I thought it was worthy of note. You know if it is in the  
Guinness Book of Records 
 we would both like to share that glory. I said to members of the Committee that actually I could not be bothered researching the issue. David Carter indicated the same lack of interest in researching it. We just want to take the credit. I asked some other members to take the time to do the work for us. You know not one single member has come back and said that David Carter and I hold the record in the New Zealand system for standing against each other. So we will just have to leave that at the moment as an unanswered question.  
In addition to that though the Hon David Carter did acknowledge former Ministers of Agriculture. That is not often done in this House and I think it was a good way to start the new parliamentary term particularly by acknowledging the Hon Jim Anderton who put a huge amount of effort into the initial stages of this work as did his predecessor the Hon Jim Sutton as well. The bill was as we have heard around in ideas stage only in 2004. It went through a lot of consultation. We had at that time an ACT takeover of Federated Farmers. Don Nicolson—oh the Hon John Banks is awake! You just have to say “ACT” and the eyes light up. That is good; he has remembered he is an ACT member of Parliament at the moment. One of your colleagues Mr Banks—Don Nicolson—was running Federated Farmers at the time. When he heard about this scheme to track animals he went ballistic. It was like a declaration of war on farmers throughout New Zealand and that raging continued until he became an ACT candidate. Fortunately for Federated Farmers he moved out of that position and fortunately for the good of the country he did not get elected to sit alongside Mr Banks in Parliament. But there was huge opposition at that stage; nevertheless the bill continued.  
David Carter picked it up it was referred to a select committee and from my reading of the Primary Production Committee report very rigorous consideration was given to this bill. I want to note particularly the chairman of the select committee Shane Ardern who has spoken earlier in this debate. My recollection of reading the report is that four members of that select committee who in my view—even though I was not on it but from reading the report—worked quite hard on the detail of this legislation are no longer in the House either through their own choice or the choice of the voters in their electorates. So I want to acknowledge my two parliamentary colleagues from Christchurch Brendon Burns and Jim Anderton also my colleague Ashraf Choudhary and National Party MP Sandra Goudie. They were on this select committee at the time; they are not here in Parliament any more. Obviously they cannot contribute in the debate and I think their work should be at least noted.  
We have looked at the content of the bill in some detail but the area that I think we have not looked to enough is the future potential of this legislation not just across deer and cattle which it will currently cover but across a much broader area: positioning New Zealand to be at the cutting edge and leading in what consumers actually want. I think it was Jonathan Young who just resumed his seat who mentioned this fact as well. I think more could be made of it. It is really important for the New Zealand economy that we are seen not to be following other countries—as we unfortunately are in this particular tracking process—but actually leading a response to what consumers want because they are the people who are going to make us successful or not. If we are not providing product in a way that consumers want and look to in the future—if we are not what they seek—we will have much harsher competition than we already have.  
What consumers want to know is where the product comes from. They want to know that it is safe they want to know if we are talking about meat that it has been raised in a way that meets their ethical standards and they want to know that it has not been raised in a way that causes huge damage to the environment. That point I think we miss out on quite substantially. We already do it in other areas. We do it in respect of apples. If you buy an apple overseas eat it and say “I think this apple is contaminated. I think it might have some residual spray on it.” you can take that apple in get it tested for the residual spray and our New Zealand marketers can trace the apple back not just to New Zealand but actually to the very row of the orchard that that apple came from. That can give overseas consumers huge confidence in the safety of our product and that is the sort of marketing that we could use for the National Animal Identification and Tracking system and apply it to what consumers will want now and in the future.  
My colleague Grant Robertson talked about a project that he worked on with the Hon Simon Upton some years ago at a very pleasant university in Dunedin Otago University doing what I think was a particularly tastelessly named project called Paddock to Plate—but as a vegetarian I would see that as a little bit tasteless. But actually it was very very substantial and good work that Grant Robertson and Simon Upton did and again it was looking at the traceability of various products and how that could be used to give consumers both within New Zealand but also overseas a higher level of confidence in the ethical standards the safety the security and the environmental standards of the product that they were eating. 
 We can do the same with Icebreaker. Icebreaker can tell you where the wool came from for any garment that you purchase from it and it says that is a huge marketing tool for overseas customers. And we know tragically that Fonterra is very well aware of the importance of being able to trace the source of its milk and milk products due to the disastrous situation that we had in China not very many years ago. So this is a model that is initially set up to provide just basic safety standards.  
We know how important this industry is to us. If we do have—and heaven forbid that we ever do have—an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease or any other sort of disease within this farming area we will want to know as quickly as possible where each animal has been and any of these traceability elements are of course important to that. But from my perspective this is much more important in looking at future opportunities and the needs of consumers.  
Members of the House will recall last year or the year before a programme on television that has been quite harshly reviewed since its initial outburst into the conversation particularly in the social media. It snuck filming equipment in to a pig farm and exposed some of what we would call the more unethical practices in farming pigs. What every single consumer—according to reports anyway but jolly near every single consumer—of pork after that programme asked their butcher or their supermarket was “How are these pigs raised? Are they raised like in that dreadful programme on television?”. So even in the New Zealand context—where we are very familiar with our own farms we know the high standards that are kept on most farms and we are familiar with farming even if we are city-based people—having that familiarity raised an important ethical issue and people started saying “Where did this come from?”.  
In conclusion I am a little surprised at the contribution from Richard Prosser. I want to congratulate him on his election to Parliament—we need more Cantabrians boosting up the quality within this House—but I was puzzled at his contribution. I actually thought he said at the start that he was standing in support of the legislation and then he rapidly moved on to explain why he was opposed to it. I could not understand the logic. Well I actually could not find the logic in the argument that he presented to be honest. I do think that this is something that is— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch) 
: I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member; her time has expired.