Browning SteffanSTEFFAN BROWNING (Green): I rise to speak on the Food Safety Law Reform Bill. The bill has some useful parts to it but in some respects it is a bit of a public relations (PR) exercise as well. It is useful that the bill does propose some changes to the Animal Products Act the Food Act and the Wine Act and reduces some duplication there. It is important that the Government and the select committee that will be looking at this do look at the issues that came up through the botulism issue and what those processes were. Mostly they were reasonably effective and require little change. But I notice in the regulatory impact statement that it pointed out that there was not a need for much change but that the change was happening to show that the Government was doing something in response to the botulism thing. But what has happened is that we are going to have even more bureaucracy over small producers and we have already got a problem with the Food Act as it stands. In the last term we worked very very hard on the Food Act and with part of that stuff—and there are a number of members in the House here today who worked on that—the point was to remove the cost of compliance for small operators to make sure they were not driven out of business. There is nothing that I can see in this bill that is in front of us that is going to actually help achieve that. In fact with the harmonisation that is suggested in here it is probably going to make those costs even worse and reduce the chances of small producers staying in business. We will have to look at that as it goes through the select committee process. Because of that and some other features the Greens will be supporting it only to select committee. We will be looking to see what happens at that point as to whether we support it further.The bill establishes requirements on the form manner and time frames in which food enterprises must provide risk-based plans and programmes to regulators—no real problem there. It establishes regulations to enable traceability and recall requirements to be met. That is critical; we must be able to recall food when it goes wrong. But this Government has gone over the top around some of that particularly. I will use raw milk as an example. It is making it almost impossible for some small herd owners to stay in business in that niche opportunity and niche demand from some people who can only actually tolerate raw milk. The Ministry for Primary Industries has gone over the top—the Minister has gone over the top—with the regulations on that which make it actually very difficult for people to access it or for farmers to supply it. There is no need for that to be the case. As long as there is appropriate traceability and recall provisions—that is all that was needed. But they have gone too too far. One area that we are concerned about is the possible removal of country-of-origin labelling provisions. We have those provisions—rather Australia has those provisions. That is one of the only exemptions from the Food Standards Australia New Zealand arrangement we have that great trans-Tasman arrangement. It would be great if we could also have country-of-origin labelling here. The Government is proposing in this bill to remove the word source". It says the claim of source is covered by other requirements in the Act. We actually do need to know what the source of food is. Consumers deserve to know. They must be able to make those decisions for themselves about what food they are eating and where it comes from. They are being left out but big food business is being courted by the Government—or the Government is being subjected to big food business. They are the ones who say it is going to cost too much. But it is actually not going to cost too much. You would be lucky if it cost part of a cent per item at the supermarket to have country-of-origin labelling. We need country-of-origin labelling all the more as food is moved around the globe to the degree that it is. I mentioned the new regulations of small business before and we will be expecting to have submissions from small businesses that will once again be constrained by the regulations that will come out of this bill. It is important that we look after those small businesses and not just be worried about the commodities that are coming out through our dairy industry in low-value commodities. We are worried about the reputation around that and yet we are not worried about enhancing our good local producers that New Zealanders want—that we all acknowledge we want. While we are going down this course you have to ask: where is the total diet survey that looks at the contaminants in New Zealand food in the food that is on our supermarket shelves and at our farmers' markets and other places? Where is the total diet survey that is meant to come out at least every 5 years? It is more than a year late. What is happening with this Government? It does not worry about pesticide residues in food but worries about its reputation for its low-value commodities. Why is glyphosate not being tested comprehensively? Why is that? The World Health Organization has pointed out that it is a carcinogen we know that it is an endocrine disrupter at parts per billion it is a neurotoxin and yet this Government is not even looking for it properly in food and a number of other pesticides. When the total diet survey does come out this year we can expect the findings in that to be spun. They will be spun because normally they would suggest that there is next to none found with pesticides out of the tests that are done but in fact nearly all conventional food—fruit and vegetables at the supermarket—has pesticide residues in it. I am hoping that this Food Safety Law Reform Bill can address some of those issues too that we can actually give consumers genuine confidence—not spin not just PR—in what is in their food. So we will support the bill to the select committee. We will be looking at those aspects of country-of-origin labelling small businesses—the impact on them—and also these other issues such as pesticides and whether our food is safe. We will be hoping to see those things addressed by submitters and by the select committee generally. Thank you."