O'Connor Damien: Animal Products (Dairy Products and Other Matters) Bill — First Reading 
O'Connor Damien: Animal Products (Dairy Products and Other Matters) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:618;Page:14227] 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Associate Minister of Health) 
 on behalf of the 
 Minister for Food Safety 
: I move  
That the Animal Products (Dairy Products and Other Matters) Bill be now read a first time. 
 This bill provides for the regulation of the dairy industry under the Animal Products Act and repeals the Dairy Industry Act. The dairy industry is New Zealand’s largest industry. For the year ended 31 May 2003 dairy and casein exports were worth $5.81 billion to the New Zealand economy. There are over 14000 dairy farm suppliers 188 registered dairy factories 285 registered stores and transporters and 473 registered dairy premises. 
The safety and trade of dairy products currently comes under the Dairy Industry Act. That Act does not provide an adequate legislative framework for ensuring product safety outcomes or an adequate legislative framework to facilitate trade in a risk-based management environment. The prescriptive and inflexible style of the Dairy Industry Act is inconsistent with the enabling style of legislation that has been used in modern risk-based legislation such as the Animal Products Act. 
There are two overarching public policy objectives for the bill: firstly to manage risks to human and animal health from the consumption and use of dairy products; and secondly to facilitate the entry of dairy products to overseas markets. 
The proposals in the Animal Products (Dairy Products and Other Matters) Bill were first made available for public consultation in July 1999 with the release of a public discussion paper. It was distributed to a wide range of stakeholders including dairy producers exporters manufacturers farming groups consumer groups Maori and Government departments. A further discussion paper was released in February 2001 and consultation meetings were held during March 2001. Consultation has been ongoing since then on transitional and implementation matters. 
Currently the Animal Products Act exempts material or product that is dairy produce. The bill removes the exemption of dairy produce along with making a series of amendments that reflect the current risk-based management requirements under the Dairy Industry Act. These include adding definitions of dairy processor dairy material and dairy product and providing that unless exempted all dairy processes must operate under a risk-management programme. 
The bill will provide for a seamless transition between the Dairy Industry Act and the Animal Products Act. It provides for a new legislative framework that is consistent with the enabling style of legislation used in modern risk-based legislation. It will deem all product safety programmes under the Dairy Industry Act to be risk-management programmes under the Animal Products Act from the date of commencement which I anticipate will be 1 January 2005 not 1 July 2004 as stated in the bill. This will mean that all dairy processes—from the milking shed the farm dairy up until the dairy product is exported or sent to retail—will now operate under a risk-management programme. This will ensure that product safety outcomes in the dairy industry are provided for in the risk-based management environment. On these grounds there will be little change for operators in their day-to-day business functions. 
The bill also enables the Governor-General by Order in Council to exempt dairy material dairy product or dairy processes from all or parts of the Animal Products Act if certain criteria are met. Exemptions would be given only when the risks are managed under other legislation such as the Food Act or the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Act or where the known risks are negligible. There would be minimum compliance costs associated with the bill. For the majority of the industry the technical requirements will remain the same and this will mean very little change in costs. The bill provides for other matters that amend the operation of the Act. These include amendments to export requirements the conditions that can be applied to risk-management programmes and the requirements for multibusiness risk-management programmes. It is also my intention to introduce a Supplementary Order Paper that further amends the export requirements to correct a deficiency that has recently come to light. 
I propose that the Animal Products (Dairy Products and Other Matters) Bill be considered by the Primary Production Committee. Although I have not spoken to each provision of this bill in any detail I believe I have indicated that it is a logical step forward in the development of generic legislation rather than industry-specific legislation. The bill repeals outdated legislation and provides a flexible means for managing current and potential risks posed by dairy material and dairy product. I commend this bill to the House.