Tirikatene Rino: Food Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTirikatene Rino: Food Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 13 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17761. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Kia ora Mr Deputy Speaker. I am pleased to add my contribution at the second reading of the Food Bill. Although I am not a member of the Primary Production Committee I do want to acknowledge the work that has gone into the bill at the committee level by colleagues from all around this House. This is a significant piece of legislation. It is a good 470-odd pages thick. As other speakers have noted it covers the broad spectrum of food businesses—from our small coffee cart operator right through to our multinational major food industrial production export companies. So it is a significant piece of legislation.It has been a long time in the making. We have heard some profound quotes from Churchill this afternoon. We have even had ourwhaea Annette King evoking imagery of giving birth. I would rather not go there but I would like to add my own contribution that this legislation is like the good old Mainland cheese ads from about the 1990s in that good things take time. Just as we can picture the beautiful mainland of Te WaiPounamu my wonderful electorate the beautiful alps there and the wonderful old karauas there who were there talking about their cheese-making abilities indeed this piece of legislation is the same. It is long overdue. But it has had a very good once-over. It has been well scrutinised by the committee. There have been a number of very thoughtful submissions made and they have resulted in some positive amendments being made to the bill.In thinking about this although I might not be learned in all of the aspects of this bill I do think of the times that I have worked in the food industry. I worked for an iwi export fisheries company—my own folks whānau down there in Ngāi Tahu. I know the amount of work and effort that goes into the export industries and the seafood industries in terms of the licensing that they have to maintain—the very strict highest international standards that our exporters have to meet to be able to comply and to sell our produce around the word. So I am very well aware of the great level of work and effort and cost that those businesses incur in being able to trade our wonderful seafood our bounty from the sea and from right across the land overseas.I am reminded that when I was in the seafood industry we followed a consignment of lobster—what we might call crayfish. It is actually a delicacy I guess but those who enjoy their recreational fishing and can put a pot down or dive can enjoy a good feed of crays. A lot of effort goes into the export of that product—from potting it in places like maybe the Chatham Islands or down in Fiordland way where we are from. That product goes all the way through our export facilities. It is packed out chilled down and put on to the big aeroplanes flying all the way over to Hong Kong. From there it goes into some what they call grey channels and it is sped through under the cover of darkness into some ports in southern China. All that effort went in with all the care and attention we paid to getting our product in pristine shape to the market and then when we saw it arrive on the other side it was almost heartbreaking because it just got ripped open and dumped on the concrete floor. That is what our customers chose to do with our product but at least we made sure that we upheld our reputation—that we supply the finest food products to the world to discerning customers and to high-paying discerning markets worldwide.Getting back to the bill we do see that we are improving the food-handling practices and the food control through the implementation of food control plans and national programmes. I like the focus of the bill that it is all around risk management rather than the 30-year-old regulations around food hygiene where inspectors would check whether a wall was clean or check the premises. This is all about the practices. This is all about the handling of food and making sure that the practices are compliant and that they all fall under the umbrella of the relevant food control plans or national programmes.We know we are dealing with a whole raft of all different types of businesses that trade in food as I mentioned earlier. Of course no one size fits all but we do not want to add overly cumbersome bureaucratic requirements on small operators especially. I am pleased that the select committee and the Minister for Food Safety’s Supplementary Order Paper 278 have made some common-sense amendments that will mean that the likes of the Kiwiana sausage sizzle and the good old bring a plate to the local whatever it is club or any other social occasion that people go to—those good old traditions that we hold dear—Carol Beaumont: Not bring a plate.RINO TIRIKATENE: Well yes bring a plate with some lovely home-cooked kai on it. Those good old traditions are being excluded from the full ambit of this legislation because we would not want to go down that path of regulating the good old traditions of the Kiwi sausage sizzle.This is as I mentioned a very sensible piece of legislation. There are also many other aspects in the bill around the monitoring of the different types of food businesses because of course there are also the medium to higher-risk businesses based on the types of food that they produce and sell and therefore there would be more compliance more regulation I guess and stricter standards that they would have to abide by. This legislation allows for that. It allows for the smaller operators and right through to the higher-risk operators the bigger more industrial producers to also be regulated in the right fashion.I just want to touch on another point that was an issue that has been raised by my colleague the Hon Damien O’Connor through his Supplementary Order Paper 440 which is around country-of-origin labelling. We are disappointed that country-of-origin labelling has not been included in the legislation. If we are so proud as a nation to be selling our produce and supporting our way of life here it should be a requirement that we put our country-of-origin label on our produce. I know we do that on the export side but I think Kiwis want to know not only that the food has been made in a safe way and that people are not going to get sick but also where that food has come from. I know that my colleague Damien mentioned that other countries have followed suit and they do apply country-of-origin labelling.As I have mentioned in other debates I was surprised to learn that the vast majority of the pork that is consumed in our country is not New Zealand pork. It actually comes from Canada. I do not think the average Kiwi would know that the bacon sausages or other pork-related products that they consume come largely from Canada. But if there was country-of-origin labelling that we were required to abide by then I think it would be good for educating the public as to where their food is coming from.Apart from that I just want to conclude by briefly mentioning that this piece of legislation is really good for Māori. There are stepping stones for Māori to improve their food safety systems. I know there isTe Kai Manawa Ora the programme that started off from the new Food Safety Authority which label we will be bringing back. But also it encourages Māori and maraes especially to go into food and trade. I commend all those aspects of the bill and I look forward to it progressing through this House. Kia ora tātou.