Sio Hon Aupito WilliamORGANIC PRODUCTS BILLFirst ReadingHon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO (Minister for Pacific Peoples) on behalf of the Minister of Agriculture: I move That the Organic Products Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Primary Production Committee to consider the bill. This is a significant bill for New Zealand's organic producers. Demand for organic products is high in New Zealand and overseas. The global market is worth $116 billion and as of 2017 the size of the organic industry in New Zealand had reached approximately $600 million an increase of 30 percent from 2015. A robust and practical framework is required to help facilitate and secure the ongoing growth of New Zealand's organic sector. The Government is committed to seeing the primary sector succeed and move away from a focus on volume to a focus on value. The purpose of the Organic Products Bill is to increase consumer confidence in purchasing organic products increase certainty for businesses making organic claims and facilitate international trade in organic products. The bill achieves this by enabling the development of mandatory organic standards and ways to check that businesses selling organic products are complying with that standard. The bill will apply to businesses who describe their product as organic either through labelling or advertising and where a standard for that product is in place. It creates a consistent and common approach to producing organic products an approach that will ensure the integrity of organic producers retain and enhance consumer confidence and support trade. The bill is modelled in part on current practice in the domestic organic food and beverage sector as well as international practices. The bill also increases certainty for businesses whether by investing and innovating in the growing sector or by meeting a common specified set of requirements. Presently it's unclear which practices are acceptable and what evidence is required to demonstrate compliance in the organics industry. The bill enables a national mandatory organic standard that would provide clarity and in turn help businesses be confident in making organic claims. This bill will facilitate international trade and help us expand to new markets as it will make us more aligned with international practice. We'll be able to negotiate better more secure market access. While the current trade arrangements for organic products have been sufficient to access foreign markets to date they will not meet the demands of our key trading partners in the future. This bill is designed to be a flexible enduring piece of legislation. It could apply to any type of organic product from food and drinks to cosmetics textiles and more. The bill enables any New Zealand ministry to become responsible for the regulation of organic products relevant to its mandate including the development of organic production standards and administration monitoring and enforcement of associated requirements. This is important given the diverse and expanding range of organic products. The bill is flexible to allow requirements to be scaled depending on an organic business's risk size complexity etc. This ensures that businesses are not unreasonably burdened with compliance requirements. To make use of the sector's knowledge and expertise third party agencies known as recognised entities in the bill will carry out key functions under the bill such as evaluation and verification of organic businesses. As with allowing requirements to be scaled for organic businesses the bill also includes flexibility to reduce costs in administration of recognised entities—that's all I have on this speech. It says I'm supposed to have another page but none the less I'm happy to move that for the House to consider.