O'Connor Damien: Food Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Connor Damien: Food Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 14 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17856. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): Part 2 of the Food Bill refers to risk-based measures. I guess in summary it is appropriate standards for appropriate risk—the volume and type of food where the foods are sold and what kind of system I guess the company in the most part can afford to run. I have to say that these things have been kicked around for some time by select committees and by the Minister for Food Safety and I think we have got the balance about right.But what I am concerned about is the Minister’s statement earlier on about the savings that this bill would create for the industry. The Government has been very good at working on costs but not on value. This is a piece of legislation that affects arguably the single biggest part of our income generation across the economy both at the primary level in terms of animal production and food and also at the secondary and tertiary level—that is manufacturing and then the sale at retail. So it is a very important piece of legislation.The cost savings which the Minister claims are around $40 million may be there. In my view they are a lesser part of our consideration than the value that we may assist to create for the food industry and for the primary sector. So I would like to think that we are assisting in the establishment of a system of integrity—a robust system of integrity—that allows anyone producing primary produce or food or whatever in this country to get out there and sell with confidence that at every part of the supply chain we have avoided any possible contamination we have not allowed an infiltration by anyone or anything and we have got food that is true to label—in spite of us not having country-of-origin labelling—and that what is said on the pack will indeed be what the consumer buys and the person eats and consumes. That is very very important. So the risk-based measures the systems put in place to work through every part of possible systems breakdown or contamination are really really important.There have been concerns of course about over-regulation. The Primary Production Committee has moved on a couple of occasions—with the assistance of the Minister who has clarified a few things—to hopefully not over-regulate and perhaps that is where the Minister is pointing to the possible savings. The reality is that most of the laws that we pass in this House are for the people who are potentially going to break them not for the vast majority of people who understand the wisdom of running a system that delivers safe food.There will always be people who want to cut corners. There will always be people who want to mislabel or to put in horsemeat when beef is what the food is labelled as. There are numerous examples across the world of inappropriate labelling—effectively fraudulent operations—to the point where in the UK now and in the European Union there are major inquiries around the counterfeiting of food. Gangs are moving from drugs to food. So let us not underestimate the risks that we are talking about here.Although the Minister may be focused on reducing costs we in the Opposition are more focused on having a robust piece of legislation that actually prevents this kind of counterfeiting and fraudulent behaviour. So that is the approach that we have taken to this. We have not looked at each and every clause through Part 2 of the bill and said: “Well this is going to save a bit for people here and there.” and in fact at the same time we are doing this in the meat industry for example the Minister is allowing the dumbing down and the deregulation of meat inspection. So on the one hand we are hopefully moving to a comprehensive piece of legislation that has appropriate risk-based measures in it but on the other hand the Government has been moving in the wrong direction.Although it is not a specific part of this what happens in the slaughterhouse and what happens at every part of food manufacture will have to be identified in the food control plans that are currently covered by this area. Also of course in Part 2 we have how we develop the food control plans how we oversee them how we register them what are the national programmes and how we deal with I guess the monitoring of course which is really really important.Can I go back to the point I raised in relation to Part 1 that an independent food safety authority which this Government got rid of is going to be an essential component to any robust system as we move forward. Just as the Chinese were confused when it came to the botulism debacle about whom they should speak to and whether we had a food safety authority—in fact going back to the meat issue they demanded certification from the Food Safety Authority the old agency because they did not trust the Ministry for Primary Industries.The point is that the implementation the oversight and the enforcement of all these risk-based measures should be carried out under the control of an independent food safety authority. We in Government will reinstate that independent agency. There are numerous examples now of the Ministry for Primary Industries not having the appropriate focus or expertise—with all due respect to its officials—or independence to focus solely on food safety. It is compromised by considerations of trade of biosecurity in some instances in other areas of responsibility across the Ministry for Primary Industries. If we are to have the risk-based measures upheld adjusted where necessary and implemented we need a separate food safety authority.Without getting into the details—the Minister might want to go through the details; there are quite a few in here. I do not think anyone in the gallery would want me to read through these things. In principle we believe it is appropriate to have risk-based measures at the level needed to ensure food safety but not at a level that undermines the ability for food producers to innovate to create and to get out and deliver new products to the market place.We have got to get the right balance. In the select committee we hope we have. But without an independent food safety authority we cannot guarantee that all our good work here is going to be carried through and will deliver an absolute assurance of food safety for our consumers. So that is something we have to continue to work on.