Stewart Barbara: Consumer's Right to Know (Food Information) Bill — First Reading 
Stewart Barbara: Consumer's Right to Know (Food Information) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:632;Page:4022] 
BARBARA STEWART (NZ First) 
: 
 New Zealand First will support the Consumer’s Right to Know (Food Information) Bill going to select committee. We believe that this is a very important issue that New Zealanders want to have some input into. I have received many emails about this bill. It is an important enough issue to be discussed widely and this is an opportunity to do so. It is really ironic that as consumers we are told where our clothing shoes and electronic equipment have all been manufactured—and I know the Minister Annette King said this afternoon in question time that that was a legacy from a trade agreement—yet we do not know where our food originates. That is really taking away the choice for all New Zealanders. 
In New Zealand First we believe that if our food—and here we are talking particularly about canned food—is grown overseas or imported we should be informed on the label. Yet we are not. We know we are given that information for fresh fruit and vegetables— 
Sue Kedgley 
: We’re often not. 
BARBARA STEWART 
: Mainly; sometimes we are—but not for most other foods. So we cannot find out where our food comes from by reading the labels in the supermarket. That is quite outrageous. Many New Zealanders are becoming increasingly concerned about their health and they want to know where their meat chicken whitebait tinned fruit vegetables and even their apple and orange juice actually originated. 
We all like to think these products are New Zealand - grown products. After all is said and done we are buying them in a New Zealand supermarket so we automatically assume that those products are grown here in clean green New Zealand. But the unfortunate fact is that quite often it is only the packaging that occurs here in New Zealand—sometimes only the labelling. So what we have is the product being grown overseas the packaging being carried out here in New Zealand but the consumer being left with the impression that it is a wholly New Zealand - grown product. How wrong we often are. We could really say that in this case the packaging is totally misleading. New Zealanders deserve to know what they and their families are eating. It is our right to know. Consumers want the opportunity to choose locally produced goods over imported goods. We want to know the way they were grown and harvested. 
I received an email some days ago from a Dr Anderson in Tauranga who told me that country-of-origin labelling is carried out far and wide even though it is not carried out here in New Zealand. In Europe the US Canada and Australia most foods have to list their country of origin. In the European Union beef fruit vegetables fish olive oil eggs poultry meat and honey all have to be labelled as to their country of origin. In the US country-of-origin labelling is mandatory for all imported foods. In Australia the country of origin must be identified for packaged foods fish pork fresh fruit and vegetables. So all in all we are lagging behind in this particular area I believe. 
There needs to be more stringent rules around the labelling of foods containing GM products. It would definitely make it far easier to identify those products on the supermarket shelves. In Europe foods derived using GE technology have to be labelled. Really when we look at it we can see that New Zealand’s labelling laws for GE or GM foods are far from adequate. With around 25 genetically engineered foods approved for the New Zealand food chain it is nigh on impossible to find a food label that states that a product contains a GE ingredient. That is not good enough. Animal feed derived from GE should be labelled so that we are aware of that when those products are passed into the human food chain. We really want to know whether our food contains GE ingredients. 
The bottom line is that we do not know half as much about our food as we should. This bill is about honesty in food production. Consumers have a right to know more about their food. There is an old saying that we are what we eat. Therefore it is really important that we are fully informed about what it is we put into our bodies. New Zealand First supports this bill.