Beaumont Carol: Food Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBeaumont Carol: Food Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 13 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17764. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour): It is a pleasure to rise and speak on the Food Bill. This is an important piece of legislation. It is also—for people listening to this debate—a very substantial piece. It is one of the biggest bills I have ever seen. But it is important work. It has taken a long time to get to this point. Labour is supporting this bill. Basically it makes substantial reforms to the regulatory regime for the safety and suitability of food and it will eventually fully replace the Food Act 1981 and the Food Hygiene Regulations.I am speaking on this bill for two reasons really—first of all because of the importance of the food industry for our country. I think everybody in this House would recognise just how important the food and beverage sector is for our country and how important it is that we get it right in terms of making sure that there is confidence that the food produced in this country is safe. We have seen very recently what happens when that is threatened in any way. Our livelihood as a country is entirely—or very substantially anyway—dependent on the success of this sector.Certainly I think there is a lot more that we need to be doing and I would make the point that in terms of our economic development there is a lot more that we could be doing with the food and beverage sector to ensure that we create more value-added products and that we create better jobs in the food sector that are better paid. But this Government of course seems to be completely blind to the idea of looking at economic development looking at strategies that do create good and sustainable manufacturing and processing work in this country. That is possibly another story for another day but it is really important for our country to get it right.Of course as consumer affairs spokesperson I also want to say that this bill is important because consumers want to have confidence that the food they eat is safe and that it is not going to cause risks to their health. Of course it is pretty fundamental: whatyou eat is a very important thing. So from that point of view as well this bill is important.I do want to say that the missed opportunity is one that my very good colleague Damien O’Connor has picked up on and that is that we need to add country-of-origin labelling into this bill. There is a real missed opportunity here and we know that New Zealand consumers increasingly want to see that information. You can see already in our supermarkets that in the produce area in particular there is already voluntary country-of-origin labelling of produce. I know that many people do effectively choose to buy produce that has been grown in this country.I think that from a New Zealand point of view that is important. We want to support our producers. We want to be confident and the thing about the New Zealand industry is that—as anybody who has studied it at all or been involved in it will know—we do have very high standards. We need to maintain those standards. But consumers can be confident about New Zealand food generally and that is why many New Zealanders apart from wanting to support local producers want to buy New Zealand food. The hoops that we have to jump through as a country in exporting our food mean that we have got high standards.Certainly when I was on a task force the Food and Beverage Taskforce we looked at the degree of traceability for example that was expected of New Zealand food. Japanese consumers in particular were the example I can recall looking at. They wanted to know about traceability of the lamb they were purchasing in their supermarkets.Country-of-origin labelling—I am very glad to see that Damien O’Connor has got Supplementary Order Paper 440 on this issue. It will amend the bill “to require the responsible Minister to adopt Food Standard 1.2.11 of the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code 2002 which would introduce mandatory country of origin labelling for some foods manufactured or prepared for sale or sold in New Zealand or imported into New Zealand.”I do hope that members opposite will take this opportunity to listen to what consumers want and support that Supplementary Order Paper and ensure that we do have country-of-origin labelling. Thank you.