Browning Steffan: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBrowning Steffan: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 10 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1407. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STEFFAN BROWNING (Green): Today the Prime Minister John Key said that this year the Government will establish a food safety science and research centre at Massey University. He said that it is to protect consumers enable innovation and minimise costs for business. The Government will also introduce legislation to strengthen the framework underpinning our food safety system. There are great opportunities in this but I fear—and there is a lot of history behind what has happened around food safety in this country—that it will not go far enough for New Zealand consumers. Effectively this is a response to the melamine scare and the botulism scare in our dairy industry. It is absolutely important that we have a food safety regime that does make sure our exports meet the standards that our export markets expect.But increasingly there is a very sad picture of our rural environment. It is a high input high pollutant model of farming that leaves farmers exposed on the global market especially when the price of milk falls. If there is any hint of a food safety issue we stand to fall and fail a lot lot more. The Government’s endless fixation on growth at any price and exporting away our riches is hurting our people and our planet. The environment that we travel through when we go through the country is rarely anything to be particularly proud of and it has changed. It used to be diverse and it gave a feeling of safety around the food produced there and some sort of sustainability and it is going rapidly in the other direction. The great experiment—an industrial model of oil dependence and chemically based food—is clearly unsustainable.I use as an example Roundup which used to be advertised with “You can drink the stuff”—glyphosate being the active ingredient. We do not even seem to test for it in our waterways. We are using it increasingly hectare after hectare. Massive areas are being used for various farm management systems. The reality is that this glyphosate is damaging the microbiology of our soils and deteriorating the sustainability of that very soil. It becomes less porous it cannot handle the rain the same and it cannot handle the drought the same.A story in Stuff today that has just come through from Washington shows a report saying that people eating organic food are exposed to only half the level of pesticides as in non-organic food. Other reports show that there are at least four times as many pesticides in non-organic food. Sometimes people see organics as unaffordable. Do we really want a tiered society where only the rich who can afford to eat it—or choose to in that sense—are the only ones who can have a healthy diet? This Government and the previous Government of National chose not to advance the organic system. It chose not to help the Organic Advisory Programme which was so successful in helping people convert to organics. What does it do? It has done away with environmental monitoring in many many cases.What we could have is some very good progress indicators if we move towards organics. Glyphosate is showing up in breast milk. But where is the Ministry for Primary Industries even looking to see how much glyphosate is coming through in food? We have to remember the herbicide-tolerant swedes in Southland using a chemical that is banned in China. How much of that chlorsulfuron went into those swedes and turnips that the cows ate? In the swedes’ case some died. In fact a lot of cows died. That material that information in its full form has not come out yet.We think the Government should support the organic sector and move towards a more sustainable society. Thank you.