Kedgley Sue: Budget Debate 
Kedgley Sue: Budget Debate 
[Volume:608;Page:5873] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 This year’s food safety budget is underspent by approximately $5 million. Ordinarily a Budget underspend would be cause for great celebration and rejoicing but when one considers the parlous state of food safety in New Zealand I find the underspend frankly cause for alarm. The Food Safety Authority we remember is an agency that does virtually no monitoring or testing of the vast amount of produce that is imported into New Zealand or of any food that is produced here in New Zealand. Yet when we look at the accounts much of the underspending occurred in the critical area of monitoring of our food supply—an area where the agency is notoriously weak and we do not have even the most rudimentary programme in place. 
Let us take the simple issue of campylobacter just as an example. New Zealand has the highest rate of campylobacter poisoning of any Western country. It is about twice the rate of similar countries and it is growing by about 25 percent every single year. Last year more than 12000 New Zealanders became ill as a result of campylobacter poisoning and about 500 ended up in hospital. We know that most campylobacter poisoning comes from eating chicken meat and that four out of every five fresh chickens sold in New Zealand are contaminated with either campylobacter or salmonella. 
What is our Food Safety Authority doing about this intolerable level of contamination? Where is our national strategy to clean up poultry rearing and processing plants and food outlets and to halve campylobacter rates within 5 years as Britain has pledged to do? The answer is that there are no such programmes in New Zealand—I should say no such national strategies because there is probably some little programme sequestered somewhere in the authority. 
Another vital food safety issue is the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in our food chain. A recent survey of data from 100 poultry farms all around New Zealand has found an extraordinary 50 percent of them contaminated with the antibiotic-resistant bacteria VRE—Vancomycin-resistant enterococci. One would think that this would be a cause for alarm and treated as a serious food safety concern particularly as if these antibiotic-resistant bacteria were to transfer their resistance to methicillin-resistant  
Staphylococcus aureus 
 prevalent around New Zealand we would have a national health scare that would make Sars look like a dress rehearsal and this has already happened. But astonishingly we have no programmes in New Zealand to estimate the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the food chain or to randomly test chicken meat. 
I put forward a Budget bid to do this last year and was told there was no money in the Budget for this work. That was the previous Government so I have to say it is galling to say the least that not only is this work still not being done but there is $5 billion languishing around in the Budget that could have been spent on that important study. 
Now in a positive light I am relieved that the Food Safety Authority will finally look at imports and regulations around the domestic food supply but I am completely mystified as to why the agency was vehemently opposed to country-of-origin labelling when it is explicitly required in its terms of reference to support consumer choice through accurate and meaningful labelling. Two recent consumer surveys have found that 70 to 80 percent of consumers want to know where their food comes from but officials are arguing that there is no interest in country-of-origin labelling here in New Zealand. This is absolutely preposterous and very mystifying. 
I turn to Vote Health. We are pleased that there has been a significant investment in primary health-care. We support the concept of public primary health-care organisations and multidisciplinary teams of health-care professionals working together. Unfortunately we have seen no evidence to date of these multidisciplinary teams in the primary health-care organisations. Pharmacists and complementary health-care professionals are clamouring to be included in these teams but so far they have been shut out. We are also concerned at the way the primary health-care organisations are being implemented on a geographical basis and the impact on medical practices that miss out on the higher subsidies. Already we have medical practices facing ruin as patients are lured to clinics that are able to access subsidies and therefore charge reduced fees. Surely it is not the Government’s intention to see medical practices shut down around New Zealand.