O'Connor DamienHon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Minister for Food Safety): Thank you Mr Chairman. I thought it best that I take a call before I started forgetting all the questions that have been put to me. I guess the bill hasn't been in the House for some time and there may be some people who are listening who may not have quite worked out what it's all about so I thought I would go back to basics. This bill is a very important piece of legislation. Unfortunately because of the false botulism scare—which was an international debacle effectively—we weren't in the position to properly test milk powder that was thought to have botulism in it. As we do always take a precautionary approach we went out and alerted some of our trading partners and that has literally cost us hundreds of millions of dollars. Subsequent to that the previous Government held an inquiry. It came back with recommendations—in fact there were 38 of them in all. It did undertake some very good work—I acknowledge the set-up and establishment of the New Zealand Food Safety Science and Research Centre and the Food Safety and Assurance Advisory Council—and it conducted a number of other practical operational changes that we hope will prevent any such thing in the future. I will acknowledge the previous Minister of Food Safety David Bennett and his I guess shepherding of this bill into the House. I have to say there have been a lot of very good questions put to me in the committee and there have been a lot of others. Can I just say firstly—and starting to address some put by our coalition partner New Zealand First—they have consistently raised issues about the impact of food legislation on small producers. Can I assure the Hon Tracey Martin in regard to the question that she asked on behalf of her colleagues that we are as a Government moving to reduce the compliance on small innovative food producers and to ease the pathway for them to develop the new products that might take New Zealand into the future. This Government will assist us to move from being a country that produces lambs and logs and produces meat and the best bulls to producing the finest-quality food for the world's most discerning customers. That's what we want to do. A lot of that innovation and creativity comes from small operators around the country and we are doing a number of things. We are progressing a range of initiatives that will help reduce the time the effort and the cost required for small food-business owners to meet the food safety regulations. We make no apology for those regulations being stringent because we need to produce the safest food in the world. But we have to acknowledge that for small operators around the country who might be incurring the cost of long travel distance to far-flung-out places—and they're just producing a small amount of food but it's great food—they have to incur the cost of flights of travel and of verification. We are looking to bring a lot of that online and to reduce I guess the ongoing compliance costs. But we must ensure that they continue to produce safe food. That's paramount. So an assurance for the Minister there on behalf of her colleagues and of course the rest of Parliament which wants to ensure that we have a good food safety regime. I'll speak briefly to a couple of—oh well before I'll go to that I guess just in answer to a few other questions that have come from my colleagues. To my associate Minister Nash he's asking about what practicable" means. I could turn the table on him and say well it's a bit like what "precautionary" means in fishing. There's a lot of variation in it and can I say that we have to trust the people who implement this to do it in the right way. It's up to Ministers in Government to keep an eye on them and I'm sure we'll do that. Can I come back to the Supplementary Order Papers and there are two of them doing a couple of things. It was raised again by New Zealand First—who have concerns about allowing people to eat hemp seed. I have to say it's a low THC. Actually THC in itself doesn't do a lot to give you a buzz and so I'd have to say—well actually I apologise. That's not quite true. The THC will but the cannabidiol won't—and so a slight mistake there on my part. There's no way that we're promoting the consumption of high THC hemp seed or will allow that. But the reality is that we're going to have to change through the Supplementary Order Paper the definition of "food" because as we know people are eating lots of things safely as food. I have to say I can remember the first time they put a flower on my plate. I looked down with horror wondering what to do with it but I was assured that you could eat the flower safely. I'm more familiar with tutu which is actually the flower down in my patch that if you ate it you wouldn't do too well. The point is that we have to ensure the systems in place protect us. This change in definition will allow people to consume hemp seed but it's not going to give them a buzz or make them sick—other than huge amounts of consumption of seed which may do strange things to your body but not to your mind. So it's a sensible progression. The other Supplementary Order Paper which was brought in at the last minute is one to ensure that the Dietary Supplements Regulations won't expire as they are deemed to do in 2019 under current legislation. We're taking the opportunity in this piece of legislation to extend out to 1 March 2021 those regulations to give us plenty of time to have a review of them and to go through and make the tweaks that we may need. Can I just say that I appreciate as I say the introduction of this bill by the previous National Government. The fact that we supported it through—it's had unanimous support in the House all the way through and we'll pass this as quickly as we can. It's been a long and sorry saga around the WPC80 dilemma but we've used the opportunity—made the best of a good crisis I suppose—to improve the legislation and to hook on a couple of other changes that will improve the regime around food safety in this country so that we can rightfully stand up and say that we produce the best food the safest food. We've got legislation in place that can be implemented and any of our trading partners can come here and check the legislation and check the practices carried out by the officials. On top of that of course it will provide pathways for young often but small innovative food producers—people with new ideas to create new food that will take this country into the future."