Roy Eric: Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Roy Eric: Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:642;Page:11839] 
ERIC ROY (National—Invercargill) 
: 
 I also commend to the House the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill. The Primary Production Committee has had its head around a number of issues in relation to a bill about a very complex matter. Essentially this bill seeks to allow the utilisation of a whole range of agricultural compounds but to maintain their integrity and the assurance that those products are safe and that there is no way they will impair denigrate or reduce the impression of the products we want to sell. That is quite a complex issue. 
This bill is called the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill and the first question that I think is of interest is: “What exactly is an agricultural compound?”. Agricultural compounds can be natural or synthetic and they can include medicines. They are fertilisers pesticides fungicides herbicides and insecticides and they can be synthetic organic or conventional. Over 500000 different compounds have been identified within foods in terms of nutrients and natural and artificial pesticides. So it is a very complex area. 
We are all aware that we have to enhance what we do. We need to apply remedies we need to improve fertility and we need to do a number of things to treat sickness. That is where the animal compounds come in. This is important because we have to keep finding new remedies and new compounds that will do the work for those people who are in the production sector. We can very easily say: “Well here is a level of protection—we just allow nothing in.” but that certainly would impair the ability of our primary production sector to compete in a world in which it is becoming increasingly more difficult to produce at a rate that is competitive product that has all the qualities the market demands. 
So we have a very complex thing called an agricultural compound that we need to be able to shift into New Zealand. We need to be able to give an assurance to the consumers who are buying the product. Agricultural compounds are controlled by a whole range of things: the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act the Environmental Risk Management Authority the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Act and Food Standards Australia New Zealand. There are a whole range of things covering this very very complex area. This bill wants to set some trails or some pathways so that when a product comes in there is an identified way of giving an assurance setting some requirements or refusing entry to a new product or a product that is being used. 
There is a lot of delegated authority in this bill. The question is whether there is another way to do it. Seemingly there is not. The director-general is given a whole range of powers with a set of quite stringent regulations as to how he or she makes determinations. It is quite important that someone has that responsibility and that it sits on one individual’s head. It does have some potential to increase compliance costs but in essence there does not seem to be any other way when we are dealing with such a complex area. 
I commend the bill to the House. We really need the bill to be passed to allow opportunities for the utilisation of a variety of agricultural compounds—not only those that are in use but also those that will be invented and those that are available in places other than New Zealand that we decide to have here.