O'Connor Damien: National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill — First Reading 
O'Connor Damien: National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:669;Page:16428] 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to speak on the National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill. I will not take all of my time as I know the good people of Mana and Porirua probably did not come to listen to a debate on the National Animal Identification and Tracing scheme but none the less they along with the rest of New Zealand will be really pleased to know that this is a very important bill and it was with much pleasure that I listened to the Minister of Agriculture the Hon David Carter say that. 
If we go back 2½ years we see that the current Minister of Agriculture and his friends in Federated Farmers campaigned absolutely against the National Animal Identification and Tracing scheme. It is nice that the Government has had another road to Damascus experience. This is very very important because once the Primary Production Committee has carefully scrutinised this bill we will have that system. Federated Farmers and others were I guess rightfully concerned that the system may bring in a huge bureaucracy. I will not go into the detail of some of the clauses other than to say that they specify right down to the kind of levies that might be imposed the search warrants and what might or might not happen with ministers of churches. So it is very very prescriptive legislation. 
The principle of this legislation was laid down by the previous Labour Government in 2008. I wish that my colleague the Hon Jim Anderton was here to hear the Minister’s speech because Mr Anderton as the previous Minister of Agriculture put this measure up to the industry. He said that we needed animal identification and traceability to convince our trading partners that we have the safest food of the highest quality for them to buy and that if there was any outbreak of a disease then we had a sound and robust system of identifying animals tracing them and knowing where they were so that we could minimise the spread of any disease such as—and I do not even like to say it—foot-and-mouth disease. It could be something like that—yes I said it. That would be a potential cost of $10 billion to this economy. That is why it is so important to have the highest-quality biosecurity systems. Unfortunately the Minister failed to say that he had dumbed down biosecurity by cutting 54 front-line positions which has put New Zealand at risk. But this bill is putting in place a system of identifying animals from birth right through until their death and knowing where they are. If there is any problem with disease then we will know what the possible impacts or contacts with other animals or other farms might be. 
When the previous Labour Government originally proposed this bill we made a commitment of $10 million to do our part in this programme. At that time National encouraged Federated Farmers to oppose the system. It opposed the system on some vague line of not knowing whether high-frequency or low-frequency receivers were the best way forward. That was the most sensible thing it said. A less sensible thing it said was that we did not need it. Mr King said the same thing. All of the National members said it. We need traceability of our animals so that we can convince our trading partners of the quality of our stock of our food of everything. Yet for shallow political reasons National and Federated Farmers opposed it. The Minister of Agriculture shakes his head but he knows it is true. National now expects Labour to support this bill. We will support it because it is the right thing to do. We knew that in 2008 and we were progressing this legislation. 
I will not say too much more. The detail is in this big bill. It will effectively put in place soon we hope an electronic system. Animals will be tagged; initially it will be beef and deer but I think sheep farmers should be warned that they need to be part of this system too—there is no doubt about that. Although we claim to be one of the best producers of quality food in the world the reality is that most other pastoral and livestock - producing countries have traceability systems in place that are far better than ours so we really are playing catch-up at the moment. I know that the Primary Production Committee under Mr Shane Ardern—who probably should be the Minister of Agriculture and he knows that—will deal with this bill very quickly and enable the system to be put in place. 
A number of people on the stakeholder reference group that is guiding this legislation opposed the initial roll-out of this scheme. Ian Corney the Federated Farmers representative at that time was part of the organisation that opposed the legislation but is now heading the stakeholder reference group and is passionately committed to having an animal tracing system in place. 
I hope that the technical issues of low-frequency and high-frequency eartags and how best they might work into the future can be resolved. Although the regulation-making powers in the bill will determine ultimately the technical system Labour will support the system in the meantime. 
I personally would like to see the next step that backs this up. I know the Green Party will support us in the call for country-of-origin labelling so that when we do impose the cost of $2 to $3 on farmers they know they will get more than that value back through identifying their stock as quality stock and safe food when it goes into the market place. 
Labour supports this bill welcomes it into the House and acknowledges the great work done by the previous Minister of Agriculture Jim Anderton to get it this far. 
Debate interrupted.