Ewen-Street Ian: Meat Board Restructuring Bill — First Reading 
Ewen-Street Ian: Meat Board Restructuring Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:615;Page:11030] 
IAN EWEN-STREET (Green) 
: 
 The Greens are pleased to support the progress of the Meat Board Restructuring Bill to the select committee. Members will be aware that this legislation became essential when the Wool Industry Restructuring Act passed into law as the meat and wool industry-good bodies were to be combined under that Act. 
I am personally very pleased that the farmer vote on this bill was considerably less equivocal than the vote on the restructuring of the New Zealand Wool Board. Some members may recall that the Greens voted against that bill for a couple of reasons. Firstly we perceived that there were doubts over the farmer mandate for the proposed new structure in terms of the numbers of farmers who voted and secondly the new governance network as outlined in that Act appeared to at least have the potential to disenfranchise farmer shareholders. 
Subsequent events have shown that at least some of our fears have been realised but this is probably not the time to debate them. So yes I am relieved that there is a mandate from farmers and that it is more secure for the New Zealand Meat Board than for the restructuring of the Wool Board. 
In essence this bill is quite straightforward. It divides the Meat Board functions into two. The board itself remains with a number of functions. First of all and perhaps more important as my colleague Doug Woolerton said the quota management functions especially in respect of sheep products to the European Union and beef to the United States. The quotas are hugely important not just to the industry but to New Zealand as a whole and they must be protected. I think everybody recognises that. 
The board will also have responsibility for management of the industry’s financial reserves in response to the wishes of the farmer shareholders and I am really pleased to see that that remains. They will also have accountability for the actions of the board which is more than I fear may happen in the Wool Board restructuring. They are also responsible for the registration of exporters. 
On the other hand the Meat Board will lose a number of functions. First of all its industry-good function; secondly the power to collect and spend levy moneys; and thirdly its 5-yearly performance and efficiency audits which are to be replaced with compliance audits and the farmer vote—although I remain unconvinced that a farmer must have such a high minimum number of sheep or cattle to be entitled to vote. I still have trouble with the idea that a farmer must have had a minimum of 250 sheep to vote even though farmers have been paying levies in some instances for many many years. 
The Greens are very pleased to note that the financial reserves of the industry will be managed by the board and spent by the industry-good body. I am not sure whether it has a name yet; the most recent one that I have heard is the Single Organisation Ltd. Is that still the case? 
Darren Hughes 
: It’s quite catchy. 
IAN EWEN-STREET 
: Yes whatever. The kind of spending that is being mooted is to cope with crises such as outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease or BSE—mad cow disease—or something of that order that would obviously bring the meat industry to a standstill overnight and probably bring the whole of the New Zealand economy into free fall very soon thereafter. 
The industry-good body should also spend money on the integrity of the quota functions. First of all managing the quota functions is important but as I said earlier maintaining their integrity is also essential. 
The third issue that the industry-good body is to look at is projects. Now these are not very explicit but I have thought about them and personally I would like to see these projects include research into the costs and benefits of moving the meat industry into an increasingly organic regime for instance. I know that many farmers and a number of members like my colleague Mr Eckhoff who is sniffing at me— 
Gerrard Eckhoff 
: I haven’t said a word. 
IAN EWEN-STREET 
: —who is about to sniff at me take fright at the very word “organic”. They think there is something desperately wrong with it. Maybe they still have these outdated— 
Gerrard Eckhoff 
: I’m organic. 
IAN EWEN-STREET 
: The member is genetically engineered. Maybe they are locked into their outdated perceptions of the people who practise organics rather than the organic processes themselves. Almost all farmers are intuitively aware that for the industry to survive in the longer term it must embrace sustainability not only in an ecological sense but in an economic one as well. For many years now we have been embroiled in a constant pursuit of higher productivity: more and more productivity from the same area of land. But that I am sure will eventually be replaced by the realisation that we have to live within the capacity of the planet and more particularly in respect of farmers to live within the capacity of the soil to sustain the industry. 
In this industry in particular that of course means pasture crops. At the same time as living within the carrying capacity of the land using organic techniques we also get the benefit of having lower input costs because chemicals cost a lot of money. There are transportation costs company profits—all that sort of thing. And there are also economic returns to farmers—higher farm-gate returns—from having organic produce. 
I remind the House that ours is a market-driven economy and the market signals for this industry in particular are unequivocal. Consumers particularly in our elite markets of Europe Japan and the United States increasingly want high-quality meat products. They want them with little or no chemical residue and they are also very interested in the traceability of the product. We hear stories about supermarkets in the European Union for instance that have television screens above the lamb chops department where they show videos of frolicking white little sheep. The implicit understanding is that those frolicking white little sheep have become their nice little lamb chops on the other side of the world. It is important to them. And of course the lambs are tended by a kindly green farmer with a crook rather than a motorbike and dogs. 
At the same time those very same markets that are saying they want high quality low chemical residue and traceability are also saying that they do not want genetically engineered product. Whether they are logical or rational is irrelevant. The fact is that consumers utterly reject genetically engineered food products at least at this time. It certainly seems to be going into the foreseeable future as well. 
There are utterly compelling economic reasons for not embracing genetic engineering. I have been through them on a number of occasions in this House and it is probably not appropriate for me to revisit them now—to the great relief of my colleague Mr Eckhoff. But I encourage the industry-good function Single Organisation Ltd to spend time and money on investigating the question of genetic engineering for livestock farmers. It really is an important area. We are being forced to embrace it by the Government and Federated Farmers of New Zealand is also supportive. But the grass-roots farmers—by most polls around 70 percent of farmers—simply do not want it. I believe that one of the major functions of the industry-good body is to do some independent work and establish hopefully once and for all whether it is worth New Zealand embracing genetic engineering. The economic analyses that have been put together so far and this includes the Government’s own one that was released the day before Easter—which shows us how good the news was—show without any doubt at all that embracing genetic engineering will be disastrous not only for the agriculture industry but for the economy as a whole. 
Returning to the bill itself the Greens are pleased to support its passage to the Primary Production Committee.