National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 07 February 2012. Volume:677;Page:120. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill 
In Committee 
Hon DAVID CARTER (Minister for Primary Industries) 
: 
 I seek leave for all the provisions of the National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill to be taken as one question.  
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is no objection. Members we move first to the National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill. The question is that Part 1 stand part.  
Hon Damien O’Connor 
: Mr Chairman— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: One moment we have a—[ 
Interruption 
] Just to clarify what the debate is about as it is one question I am sure the honourable member knows that it is one debate— 
Hon Damien O’Connor 
: Wide ranging Mr Chair? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: No he did not seek a wide-ranging debate; he just sought that all parts be taken as one question. 
Hon Damien O’Connor 
: Asset sales? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: No you are testing me Mr O’Connor. So the question is that Parts 1 to 6 schedules 1 and 2 and clauses 1 and 2 stand part. 
Clauses 1 and 2 Parts 1 to 6 and schedules 1 and 2  
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman) 
: 
 Thank you Mr Chair. I appreciate your guidance there.  
I just start by going back. We have started the new Parliament. The National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill has been hanging around for some time—in fact since 2004 when the previous Labour Government in its wisdom saw the need to introduce a tracing system that would not put us at the leading edge of national animal management but would actually just bring us up to what has been occurring in a number of other countries for a number of years. We pride ourselves on being a nation of good managers of agriculture livestock animal welfare issues and of course biosecurity.  
Unfortunately at the time when Labour introduced this legislation there was quite a vicious campaign launched by Federated Farmers against this initiative. I have to get that on record because as a result of that it is now 2012 some 8 years on and we are passing this bill through Parliament.  
Labour supports the bill because we know it is necessary. We need to know where animals are whom they have been sold to and what should occur in the terrible and unlikely event of an outbreak of foot-and-mouth for example. We now trace our animals for tuberculosis and many of the dairy animals are traced for breeding purposes but we do not have one comprehensive scheme. This bill will move us down that track for cattle and for deer.  
Just to reiterate the countries that currently have such a scheme in place are Australia the United Kingdom Canada the USA South Korea Japan the EU Argentina and Brazil. We are right behind all our competitors and in a world where consumers are demanding to know where their food comes from and how it was produced and want an assurance that it can be traced in the event of some contamination or in the event of some disease—we are not there yet—the sooner we pass this through the House the better. The National Government sat around on its hands I would suggest. The Primary Production Committee dealt with this bill as quickly as we could but it has been sitting around and it is important that we move on.  
The select committee dealt with a number of issues in its consideration and I am sure the chairman will speak at some stage. There were issues because of that 8-year period. Technology moves on very very quickly. What was in my view a political stance by Federated Farmers to animal tracing in 2004—to object on the basis that technology was unsure and all the rest of it—was just an excuse at that point. There were however legitimate questions around the technology that should be used moving forward to make sure we did not impose a system on farmers processors and saleyards and then realise 2 or 3 years down the track that the technology was obsolete. I think the select committee did its very best in this area.  
The issue comes down to low frequency versus high frequency. Both frequencies are used on the farm—less so in processing factories. Labour has supported and supports a bill that opens the door for both technologies but we hope that there will be clear alignment of them as this moves forward because as soon as we can tell where all the beef cattle the dairy cattle and the deer in this country are then we will be better off and more secure in terms of potential biosecurity threats.  
I go back to the bill. I am sure the Minister for Primary Industries will get up and answer a few queries on technical points. One of the questions that we have to ask of the new organisation is about its ability to communicate with and connect to lifestyle farmers. As I say farmers have reluctantly taken this on board. I think they now appreciate the benefit of this. Lifestyle farmers—people with few animals—may not understand the threat that they if they stay outside the system may pose to our whole production systems in agriculture. I implore the officials to take on board some guidance about how to get out there and how to do some public relations. We are told that there will be a whole lot of brochures and a whole lot of marketing. We just have to make sure that that marketing is well targeted and that it is effective in getting out to those lifestyle farmers. 
 Can I say given that we have a broad-ranging debate that there have been assets sale here as well—and I know that the Minister smirks. In fact the Government in its enthusiasm for asset sales actually sold off last year a company that is likely to benefit—and good luck to them—from the implementation of National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT). Sirtrack was a subsidiary of the Crown research institute Landcare Research and was sold to a Canadian company. It has actually developed technology that will be of huge benefit to the system when it is implemented in this country. All I say on that—because I know you are allowing a wide-ranging debate Mr Chairman—is that if we see the stupidity of asset sales continue then once again we will miss out on potential benefits as we move into the future.  
But I come back to NAIT. I just say that the question of sheep is one that I think should be raised. The sheep farmers out there will be panicking and saying “Oh not us! Why should we be involved?”. I am not quite sure what a ewe was worth in 2004—that is a female sheep not “you” Mr Chairman because we are not allowed to say that of course. A ewe was probably worth maybe $30 to $40. Now they are looking at $150 to $200 for a good ewe. I think that sheep farmers might now understand the potential benefits of having their animals included in a traceability scheme so that if we have an outbreak we can move quickly protect our export industry and know where each and every one of the sheep are. At the moment sheep are outside the scheme and the Minister may want to get up and explain whether he intends to move in that direction and include sheep. At the moment it is cattle and deer and I think that is a positive step forward.  
I am not going to say anything more other than that Labour supports this bill. It has been a long time in coming and this will be a very important step forward for the credibility the integrity and the value of the New Zealand agricultural production systems. 
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki - King Country) 
: 
 Mr Chairman can I take this opportunity to congratulate you on your reappointment as Deputy Speaker—I have not had a chance to do that until now. This National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill as the previous speaker the Hon Damien O’Connor said came to the Primary Production Committee and we spent a considerable amount of time going through the issues in relation to the detail of this. In doing so we made some recommendations to the Minister for Primary Industries. I am pleased to say that the Minister has taken up most if not all of those recommendations.  
The previous speaker touched on the need for a robust identification system and that is absolute. We as members of the Primary Production Committee just met with a Swedish delegation of our counterparts from that country. They were fascinated by the growth of our primary industries in this country and asked us what it was that we thought may have differentiated what we do here as compared with what is happening in other parts of the world. One of the things that sets us aside when you look forward at what our opportunities might be as far as exporting our primary industry products is concerned is our quality control and the checks and balances and assurances we can give when we market product to something like 150-odd countries in the world.  
One of the things that goes with that is traceability. How certain are you that the product you are selling is what you say it is to the quality the market is requiring and what you are suggesting you are going to market it as? That makes it absolutely essential that we have in place systems that can robustly check those measures. That comes down to something as fundamental as being able to identify the particular animal in question. It is important not only from a quality-control point of view but from a biosecurity point of view as well.  
So the select committee looked at what was being proposed listened to a wide range of submissions and called in a number of experts and through that process we discovered that potentially we were being left behind by emerging technology. We were not sure—and how will you ever be sure of those things—and so we asked for further advice on how we could make the National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill more enabling around that. We received some I guess conflicting information. The Minister and his officials have been grappling with that for some time. Ultimately we ended up in a situation where we have come up with provisions that enable future development in that area. So the bill is an enabling piece of legislation that does not lock in one or another particular piece of technology.  
Some of the opposition that the previous speaker spoke of earlier in the debate on this issue was around what cost there would be to the individual producer and what potential benefit there could be to the individual producer. As our markets have emerged and developed and prices have increased there is more and more potential for this to be used not only for the purposes intended by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and the Government but by farmers themselves in the management of their farming systems. So to enable a rapid and accurate tracking of animals from birth to death is something that is fundamental for our exports. There is nothing more fundamental than providing information on the location the movement and the history of animals and I think it was brought to the attention of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry under the previous Government with the Waiheke Island foot-and-mouth hoax. There were a lot of small lifestyle blocks as you would expect at a location like that that were unidentified or the animals thereon were unidentified and a lot of time was spent trying to ascertain what was actually there and what the risks were. The real irony of that is that by the time that information was available news reports and suchlike were reporting all sorts of things that were inaccurate. To be able to have an accurate register of these livestock is absolutely fundamental to the integrity of our biosecurity system.  
This bill is intended to improve our biosecurity management. It will help manage risks around human health. These are often overlooked. With the whole debate around the use of 1080 and the eradication of possums what are we trying to do here? We are trying to control the spread of tuberculosis. It has an effect on humans. It is an old disease. It is not something that is commonly thought of as a modern-day disease but it could be and the interrelationship between bovine tuberculosis and human tuberculosis is well documented. So there is a lot of opportunity in regard to that.  
To improve animal productivity—that is the point I think that the previous speaker was touching on. There is a range of options in terms of recording the performance of individual animals within a herd or a flock that ultimately could lead to a profitable use by the farmer himself or herself of this new technology. That is something that I think is completely underexplored at the moment. It is probably more advanced in the cattle industries of dairy and beef than it is in the sheep industry but there is an opportunity for all.  
The bill also as I said earlier allows a higher degree of certainty around market access. When we are marketing to the world we need to be able to assure those markets that we are providing a product up to a standard. It also supports a lot of the compliance issues that Ministers face in international agreements around trading. So there is a range of opportunities there. Enabling the establishment of the National Animal Identification and Tracing governing organisation is going to be a fundamental part of the whole process going forward and you know the legislation needed to be solid around that. If there is any further debate to be had I am sure it will be had in the Committee stage of this process. Data management systems the protection of those and the information provider involved in that have the same difficulty as any other information provider and data management. So the right regulation etc. around that needs to be set. 
 Then of course the species of animals that are included is an evolving thing. I suspect that it will not be long before all types of animals are in there but obviously there is some resistance from our sheep-farming colleagues as to what benefit there could be and how you can credibly have a retention rate of the devices to make it a robust system. One of the challenges I guess is that you know for some of our high-country farmers the animals are not herded that often or brought together in a place where these devices could be inserted. Certainly when you talk volumes with low numbers of labour there are challenges around the physical side of managing all that. So devices that can be applied and that have a retention rate that is acceptable and a reliability rate that is acceptable is a developing area as well.  
I recommend the passing of this legislation. It has had a long gestation period. It has been fraught with debate but it is good to see it getting to this point in the parliamentary process.  
Hon DAVID CARTER (Minister for Primary Industries) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to follow the contribution from my colleague Shane Ardern and can I take this opportunity to thank him as chair of the Primary Production Committee for the work he did in bringing this legislation back to the House. Can I take this opportunity to thank all the previous members of the Primary Production Committee who worked through the legislation once it was finally presented to this House.  
The Hon Damien O’Connor made some valuable points about the length of time it has taken to get this legislation to this stage to the Committee of the whole House this evening. It was in my opinion something to congratulate a former Labour Government on that it started this process in 2004 not long after we had had a hoax scare of a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak on Waiheke Island. But that scare did prove to us that as a Government regardless of which Government it was at the time we were ill-prepared if we had to deal with a real incursion.  
I want to thank the former Minister of Agriculture Jim Anderton for initiating a process because it has not been without some angst out there in amongst the farming community. When the National Animal Identification and Tracing system (NAIT) was first proposed most of the industry was accepting of the need for such a system. But there was very vocal opposition from Federated Farmers. That has taken a long time to dissipate. It is interesting to note today that as this bill passes through the Committee stage I understand that there will be only one party voting against it. I think we can all figure out why there was such vocal opposition to the original legislation and that probably almost ends up by pointing a finger at one particular personality within Federated Farmers. But frankly there is a new broom that has swept through that organisation and Federated Farmers now willingly embraces the concept of and recognises the need for the National Animal Identification and Tracing system.  
When the Hon Damien O’Connor listed a number of other countries that are well ahead of New Zealand in this regard one that he did not mention but one that really struck me when I had the opportunity of visiting that country was Uruguay. That is a country with a very underdeveloped agricultural system. It is using a lot of New Zealand technology now particularly in its dairying and it has already ensured that it has a complete tracing system within the cattle herd. That for me was a real eye-opener as to how exposed New Zealand was given the fact that we did not have this technology available and that could well have been used against us.  
There have been a couple of contributions so far talking about whether we have the latest technology and whether the bill has been designed to incorporate future technological advances. In my mind this is a little like buying a laptop. You can put off the day to purchase a laptop for ever because you know that next day there is likely to be a new model. So it is absolutely critical that we get on with this. Technology will develop and there will be opportunities to update it but the legislation has been written in such a way that it will be able to incorporate any such developments in the future.  
Mr O’Connor raised two other questions that I want to comment on. One was the need to make sure that NAIT for its completeness recognises the owners on the lifestyle farms. I recognise that as a challenge. It is something that NAIT Ltd will have to grapple with but I do point out that we already have a TB eradication and testing programme and already those lifestylers have the same obligations as a large commercial beef farmer in that regard. To my knowledge the level of compliance in both commercial and lifestyle farms is really very high.  
The final point I want to touch on was again raised by Mr O’Connor around the inclusion of sheep. The legislation being passed in Parliament today is only for cattle and deer. Having said that I have no doubt that at some time in the future sheep as a species will be included. Frankly it needs to be included if we are to have the full comprehensive system necessary in the event of a major outbreak of a disease. What I think will drive the inclusion of other species such as sheep is actually recognition by many good commercial farmers that there are major technological advances to be had by better identifying the good performers in your herd or in your flock. In that regard I take the opportunity to acknowledge the work that the Crown’s farming operation Landcorp is doing in this regard. Already despite the legislation its staff have involved themselves in the radio frequency ID tagging of cattle and they have involved themselves in the radio frequency ID tagging of sheep because they want to know about the productive traits of individuals. That gives them the ability to advance genetic gain to get higher productivity off their flock and higher productivity off their herds. I think it is that sort of technology that is becoming increasingly available to the more progressive farmers which frankly the less progressive farmers are going to have to catch up with and utilise if they want to keep up with the pace.  
Can I take the opportunity to thank the Committee for its near-unanimous support for this legislation. I certainly do acknowledge that it is work that was initiated by a former Labour Government under the auspices then of the Hon Jim Sutton. 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
: 
 It is nice to follow on from the Minister for Primary Industries in such a bipartisan and harmonious way and I am sure the previous Ministers will admire that. [ 
Interruption 
] What was that? 
Hon David Carter 
: It’s so you can get to the gym by 6 o’clock.  
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: That is right! Do not hog the treadmill Minister. No it is good to hear that and obviously also when I look at this it does have an element of compulsion about it which I know is not something the Minister is a great fan of—the whole notion of compulsion—but clearly in this particular sector the Minister has decided that it is the time for some compulsion. There has been a voluntary take-up rate among I think cattle farmers of around 40 percent but clearly that is not enough in order to provide the kind of comprehensive scheme that is envisaged by the National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill. It is a pleasure to be able to stand and support this bill and acknowledge the work not only of former Ministers as the current Minister has done but of Shane Ardern and the Primary Production Committee who I know worked hard on this bill. 
The Minister and Shane Ardern both talked a lot about the foot-and-mouth situation and the importance I guess of New Zealand being able to avoid a negative consequence through a system like this identification system. I want to speak briefly about the positive opportunities that lie in this bill for New Zealand. A little while ago before I became a member of Parliament I did some work for the University of Otago and a project I worked on there with Simon Upton the former National Minister was called Paddock to Plate. It was the notion that if New Zealand is going to market its goods overseas and reach into new markets we do need to be able to address I guess the modern concerns that are addressed by traceability—that is do we know whether this was farmed in a sustainable way and what do we know about the health of the herd and the immediate environment that they are in? 
There is huge opportunity I believe provided in this bill for New Zealand to improve its export performance by being able to meet those concerns. It has been said that some of the most important people to New Zealand’s primary production industries are in fact the buyers for the big supermarket chains in the UK. If they are prepared to say “This is a product that is sustainable. This is a product that we know has been brought to us in a way that our consumers are telling us they want.” then we will go a long way to getting over some of those somewhat fictitious concerns about food miles and so on which when you balance that against the overall sustainability of the primary production process in New Zealand will actually give you a much more sustainable product even if it has had to travel a significant distance to get there. So I believe that this is actually part of a very important process. 
My own view is that actually we need to go further. It is not just about the cattle or in this case the deer; it is about the land that they graze on as well. What do we know about that? How much do we know about the sustainability of that land? Again declaring a little bit of an interest part of the job I had involved a company that has developed some technology. The company is called Regen Ltd and it was part of a company called Harmonic. They actually developed technology around measuring effluent and looking at soil acidity content and that kind of thing. If we are truly serious about a paddock-to-plate approach we need to go right back and ask whether we are able to give consumers in Britain who are buying their beef from Sainsbury’s information all the way from the kind of land through to the cattle and how healthy they are right through to how they are then farmed and produced and taken out to the shops in the UK. We have to be able to look from paddock to plate. Traceability is an important part of that and in turn this identification process is a significant part. But I do believe there is great opportunity here to actually look at this further. Equally there is great opportunity for New Zealand - based companies to help develop the technology and it is of some regret that one of the companies that is able to do that Sirtrack which grew out of Landcare Research is no longer New Zealand - owned; it is owned in Canada now.  
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: What happened to it? 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: Well it is possible for Crown research institutes to sell off their subsidiary companies. It is perhaps disappointing that we were not able to retain the benefit of that in New Zealand but as I noted there are other companies such as the ones I have had some association with that are developing this technology. I know there are numerous other companies that I have not named today. I think it is important that we make sure that we use this as an opportunity to support that kind of new technology. That is the kind of development that will help our economy—to be able to say we will leverage off what is great and productive about New Zealand and create new technologies that go with that. So really those are just some brief comments to indicate that along with the rest of the Labour caucus I strongly support this bill not just because it will help us avoid the negative consequences of something like foot-and-mouth but also because it offers great positive opportunities in my view for New Zealand and companies inside New Zealand. 
COLIN KING (National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to speak during the Committee stage of the National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill. The bill in its title certainly gives us a lot of comfort in New Zealand but as this bill progressed to the stage that it is at now there was a lot of disquiet. The public debate around it emanated right back from 2002 when Ian Corney the then Federated Farmers chairman of the New Zealand Meat and Fibre Producers Council pulled together a group. It was all very collegial early on but as things progressed there was that normal muddying of the waters that happens in New Zealand not only around farming but around all sorts of things. You have only got to look at the debate around the Food Bill; it does come in for a fair bit of kicking around.  
At the end of it one has to have faith in the process and my faith in this process was certainly strengthened with the work the contributions made by submissions and by the Primary Production Committee.  
We are at a stage now where we can comfortably and with some level of certainty implement this bill into law in due course but let us not think that it is all going to be that easy and straightforward. The responsibilities that will go upon those people when this becomes law which they will carry upon their shoulders are quite significant. It is probably a blessing in disguise that initially we are not including sheep. I say that with some consideration because just implementing cattle is going to be enough for the first 3 years in my view.  
It was necessary to give this bill as it came forward a fair amount of consideration. You have got to think about it working in reverse—think about the farmer or the shepherd working in that high country situation. When you look at some of the purposes cattle are used for you see they are not just sitting in nicely flat green paddocks in the Waikato; they are pushing into scrub-covered hill country. There is going to have to be a lot of accuracy responsibility and dedication to this programme to keep its integrity. I just want to put that on record. In the winter months when you are short of grass you put your breeding cows and your calves and that less important stock into those areas of the farm to keep them open. There will be loss of tags and there will need to be accountability back to this legislation so that those people administering it can have certainty that it is robust. If it is not it is not worth the paper it is written on.  
We have had the TB situation which is right up there and has been controversial at times but we are headed in the right direction with it.  
Just to give a bit of a flavour as to where we sell our beef I say that 230000 tonnes of it goes into the United States. It goes in under a quota system and it goes in as what we call manufacturing beef. It is ground up and blended with all sorts of other types of product and we eat it in hamburgers. One sort of scratches one’s head and thinks “Well how do we actually use the traceability model around that?”. It certainly leaves questions that have got to be asked because that has got to be one of the commodity meats that is most used in the world. However if we have got a very robust system back here in New Zealand and we can trace that product right back through to the producer then the system has got integrity.  
The dairy farming situation is reasonably simple. The average herd size in New Zealand is about 300 cows; bear in mind that it is the same size as for deer. But when we look at the sheep farming side of it the economic unit for the number of sheep today would be anything up to about 3000 to 5000 and it really would present some very challenging situations.  
The amount of meat we actually sell into Europe is 1350 tonnes and the majority of that came out of the expansion of the EU. So we do not actually sell a lot of meat into the European Union. We do sell ever-increasing amounts into Asia however; Korea and Taiwan are very sophisticated markets that demand traceability and good quality food safety.  
But probably the most important thing coming back to my initial comment is the naming of the bill. It is a tracing bill. One thing that I really see is that it bridges a lot of gaps in our biosecurity and is just so very important. I believe that it will put us right up at the front end of the food quality system because over all our red fibre production—our meat fibres—that we sell to the world we have the platinum level of food safety. We have really got to keep on pushing forward so that we maintain that leadership role. We are a small economy and if we were to be hit severely by a food safety scare it would affect our economy considerably.  
So when we look at it why was it not introduced by the companies? I mean that is probably an argument that my politics might have naturally driven. If it is such a good idea why do the companies not do it? The reason why we have taken the stand we have and why it is going to be legislated for is that it is very inclusive. It has got to be mandated by the Crown otherwise when you are doing nation-to-nation negotiations it would not have the level of credibility that one would expect.  
It is a wonderful bill. It has had a lot of refinements. I do not believe that the time it has taken to get to this stage has been time wasted. I think myself that the acceptance of it out in the farming community is far better now. There is better education. There is a lot more work to go on with and I look forward to the third reading and its final implementation into law. On that basis this is very very important legislation and this is a very important day for primary production. Thank you. 
BARBARA STEWART (NZ First) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to take this brief call. Unfortunately we did not have a representative on the Primary Production Committee last time around so I was very happy when I heard that the work had been started a long time ago in a previous Parliament. That was really good; we would have had a representative there.  
As New Zealanders we always pride ourselves on the products we produce. Our biosecurity is really really important to us and we want that high standard to continue like everybody else here in this House. We did have some questions about the National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill. We know how important our export market is and we want our export strategy to continue to be really successful.  
We had some questions when we had a quick look at the bill and we are prepared to listen to all of the comments and speeches with a great deal of interest. We wondered about the additional expense to farmers and what impact that would have on the meat that was being exported. None of these things are ever free and someone always has to pay and usually it comes back to the farmers. We wondered too about what happened when animals lost their tags. We know that that does happen so who looks after that and how is that actually paid for?  
Our next lot of questions were about the technology but I understand that that is included in the bill so we will be interested to read that further because we want to know how that technology actually operates. It must be successful; there is no way that we can have technology that is so important for our export economy if it is not going to be successful.  
Lifestyle farmers are an area of concern to us. Having been one previously I know that we bought animals the right way and I would like to think that other lifestyle farmers would ensure that their animals when they were sold or sent off to market were actually meeting the requirements.  
That brings us to enforcement. Any law that we pass here must be able to be enforced. We really cannot afford to have any cutbacks in the area of enforcement staff if this law is to be successful. We want the process to be workable; otherwise as previous speakers have said this is a total waste of time. New Zealand has a good name around the globe; we want to continue that good name. We wonder too whether or not we could ask other countries that are exporting into New Zealand their meat—pork and chicken particularly that from Asian countries—to follow the same standard that we are following.  
We are prepared to listen to this particular debate. We like the sound of what we hear and we want to ensure that New Zealand is a very successful exporter. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: The Hon—ah—Ruth Dyson. 
Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) 
: 
 It has not been that long Mr Chairman! It was only in November that you— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: I was just taking my time. 
Hon RUTH DYSON 
: I know I know. Mr Chairman can I begin by congratulating you on your re-election as an officer of this Parliament and say that it is good to have you in the Chair. I am sure that over the coming term you will continue to be fair and reasonable and allow robust debate whether the Minister in the chair has moved that it be wide-ranging or not as you are regarded highly for your tolerance in ensuring that the debates go smoothly but that everyone gets a fair opportunity to contribute. 
Can I also acknowledge the Minister for Primary Industries David Carter and say that at the end of last year we had the opportunity to contest against each other in the Port Hills electorate this time for the sixth time. We think we are now due to be put in the  
Guinness Book of Records 
 for being the two New Zealand MPs who have stood against each other the most number of times—and both been elected one as the electorate MP and one as a list MP. I am sure that is a record but I would quite like to hear from anyone who can be bothered researching it who has more interest in that bit of research than I do because frankly I have not put it as a priority. If somebody else would like to do it please contact me in my office because I would be really keen to know. 
I also want to acknowledge David Carter and say how pleased I was that he in his turn to take a call acknowledged the work of previous Labour Ministers. It is not always the case that members of one party acknowledge the work of other parties. I think it is important that we do that. We should try to keep the record straight. On an issue like this which is to the benefit of the health and well-being of New Zealanders—literally as well as in terms of our economy—I think it is important that we acknowledge that representatives of many parties have those interests at the heart of their thinking. 
It is also good to be supporting this National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill. I note the huge amount of work that the Primary Production Committee has done to it including I think replacing the entire schedule 1A of the bill which looks to me to be a brand new insertion by the select committee. So the third acknowledgment I want to make is of the work of the select committee. Shane Ardern is I know well regarded in the House for his chairing of select committees but I also want to acknowledge all the members particularly those who are no longer in Parliament whether by their own choice or by the choice of our democratic process through the voting system.  
The Hon Jim Anderton was a member of this select committee along with my friend and colleague from Christchurch Central Brendon Burns Dr Ashraf Choudhary and the National member of Parliament Sandra Goudie. Those four were all members of the select committee that produced this amazing bit of work to go back to the House and are no longer with us to share in the debate. I am sure that every one of them will be sitting beside their wireless this evening hanging on every word that is being said and ensuring that we have captured the essence of the good work they have done. I am sure they were well supported by the officials who I know are very keen for this debate to progress. 
We have heard a lot of discussion about the reasons that this bill is so important for the well-being of our international reputation and for the well-being of our livestock in ensuring that if there is a potential or real outbreak of any disease we do have that robust traceability. I think the point that my colleague Grant Robertson made in his contribution is one of the more important points that we should also focus on and that is the changing nature of consumer interest and the change in power that many consumers feel. For those who eat meat—and I am not one of those people who does— 
Iain Lees-Galloway 
: Oh! 
Hon RUTH DYSON 
: I am well balanced by my colleague from Palmerston North Iain Lees-Galloway who eats more meat than one individual needs to eat in their entire lifetime. He certainly balances up the fact that I do not share in that eating. 
But people who do eat meat are more and more interested in knowing where the meat came from and the condition of the herd it was raised in and as we in New Zealand know—it is more important to us than perhaps those from any other country—are more and more interested in the environmental degradation that may have been caused by the farming of the animal they eventually eat. The opportunity for better marketing of our product I think is one of the by-products of this legislation. 
Grant Robertson also mentioned the sale of Sirtrack. Sirtrack was a subsidiary under Landcare Research. It is one of the companies that would have benefited from this development. We have others in New Zealand that will benefit from the development of this legislation. But it raises for me and for Labour members of this Committee a very important concern. Even though the Crown research institutes should be able to divest themselves of a subsidiary when they are no longer able to carry that subsidiary through—or interested in doing that or see it as a priority—to the next stage of the research that it is undertaking the fact is that New Zealand has lost all the money that taxpayers put into Sirtrack to develop it as a subsidiary of Landcare Research. The fact that that information and potential economic benefit have now gone to Canada is something about which we should not say “Well that’s the way it is because the legislation allows it.” I agree with the point that the Crown research institutes should be able to move on from whatever subsidiaries they may have developed but there has to be a better way than what happened with Sirtrack which was a subsidiary of Landcare Research and is now totally owned by a Canadian company. We have lost the benefit even though it was our money—New Zealanders’ money—that went into developing that expertise in the first place. So this debate is really an opportunity for Parliament as a whole to debate how we might better progress the role of subsidiaries of our Crown research institutes. 
The final point that I would like to make is in relation to the opposition from Federated Farmers. I was very interested in the points that David Carter made. He said really that when Don Nicolson was running the show they were an ACT empire.  
Hon David Carter 
: Never mentioned his name. 
Hon RUTH DYSON 
: He did so very delicately; he did not mention his name. I cannot be bothered with that sort of game. We all know whom he was talking about. When Don Nicolson was running the show at Federated Farmers they were a little ACT empire and their opposition to this legislation came primarily because it was introduced in discussion by a Labour-led Government and also of course because it had some compulsion attached to it. I am pleased that Don has moved on in his life but I do think it causes another area of consideration and concern and that is that an organisation that has been very well regarded as being a genuine and independent voice for the farming community—a critical part of our economy—was for a short period of time taken over by one political party and no longer represented the best interests of the farming community or of the New Zealand economy as a whole. I think that is of concern and that sort of outing—for want of a better term—might well have been better raised at the time of Federated Farmers’ opposition to this legislation rather than later. 
This is a good bill. I want to acknowledge the Labour Ministers who introduced this debate in the first place and to support the fact that the National Government has carried it on. The work that the select committee has done has been extraordinarily robust and very detailed. It not only had submissions from the general public—obviously people who were interested; I think 15 or 16 organisations actually made a submission according to the select committee’s report back—but also sought independent and expert advice. That is a very good process. It should be commended to other select committees as a way of ensuring that when we get legislation back to the House like this we can have some confidence that the best eyes and ears in the country have had their say and had their input and that we are looking at robust legislation. 
It will give us more international credibility—that is the primary point of it—but it does offer us an opportunity to say what consumers of our products in the future will be looking for and also most important not only how we track the animal back to the herd the condition and the environment but how we as a nation make sure that what they learn when they track that product back to the source is good news. We do not want them hearing that the animal they are proposing to eat has come from a herd that destroys our environment. That is the next big challenge for this Government. 
Dr CAM CALDER (National) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to rise and speak very briefly on this bipartisan bill the National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill. Some years ago I was living in south-west France at the height of the mad cow epidemic and it was a great pleasure to be able to go into a charcuterie and boucherie in the south-west in the patte d’oie of Auch and know exactly what farm the meat that I was purchasing was coming from. Was it near Jegun or Fleurance or St Lary? It was a very very useful tool.  
It is a very important tool for us as a marketer of dairy products and of meat globally. It applies at this stage only to cattle and deer but the meat industry alone is worth something like $5 billion. This is a bill that tracks the location of animals from birth to death or live export from New Zealand so it gives that important security to consumers whether they be in Korea or Taiwan—where they are enjoying our grass-fed beef more and more—or anywhere else in the world. I commend this bill to the House. 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North) 
: 
 This is a short call I should think just to underscore Labour’s position on the National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill. It is very pleasing to see a bill that was initiated by the Labour Government as long ago as 2004 finally making swifter progress through the House than it was in the last term under the National Government because this is so fundamental to what New Zealand is all about.  
Many speakers have discussed our international reputation the more discerning markets that we are sending our products into in the 21st century and the need really to catch up with the rest of the world on this issue. As the previous speaker Dr Calder pointed out other countries in Europe have been doing this for some time. For a long time internationally it has been easy to identify the exact source of different foods and when you think just how important food is to our economy in New Zealand and how important our reputation is when trying to get things into those markets it is really important that we get this legislation through. So it is a pity that it has kind of stalled for a while but good that we are finally going to be moving on.  
Given that time is short and I understand that there is another member from the Green Party intending to take a call I am happy to take my seat at this point. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: The member must call; you call out “Mr Chairman” to get my attention. 
STEFFAN BROWNING (Green) 
: 
 Thank you Mr Chairman. I would like to acknowledge the Primary Production Committees that over the years have worked so hard on the National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill. I have watched it from the side—unfortunately I have not been able to be a member of the select committee until this point—and other members of Parliament for the Green Party have followed this. I think we may have had a slightly different position if I had been there; we may have had some further amendments.  
In the spirit of consensus we will be supporting this bill at this point but I will suggest that because of what we see as rather Draconian powers which are put both to the National Animal Identification and Tracing organisation and the Minister this may come back before the House at some time if it seems to go for a walk in terms of individual farmers and particularly the smallholders.  
It is fantastic that we have something that has a high level of traceability. I have done a lot of work in the organic sector and traceability is paramount. It is absolutely paramount for the consumer to be able to know where their food comes from. One of my previous colleagues from this House who has now retired pointed out to us that this is really a paddock-to-plate situation. We think of things like country-of-origin labelling which we would look at. Here we have a bill that says “Hey we will track every last movement of an animal in this country.” but the consumer in New Zealand does not have any idea in so many instances where their food from other countries comes from.  
There is a concern with the wide-ranging powers as well because they are so discretionary. I am hoping that for farmers who do not want to use the low radio frequency identification tags because some consumers will not want products from animals that have been exposed to electromagnetic radiation—right or wrong and I will not go down that track but from a consumer perception point of view they may well not want it—there will be options for farmers rather than something that may be decreed by a larger industry-based Crown organisation.  
There are huge powers given to an as yet not actually fully identified organisation. We have got a fair idea and the papers that I have been able to see pretty well spell out the sector organisations and what their percentage of ownership relative to the Crown or the contribution will be— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair.  
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The Committee is resumed. Kia ora tatou no reira e te Whare. Tena koutou tena koutou tena koutou katoa. Good evening honourable members. The House is in Committee for consideration of the National Animal Identification and Tracing Bill. Prior to the dinner break at 6 p.m. the honourable member Steffan Browning was speaking. The honourable member has according to my records 1 minute and 45 seconds remaining if he wishes to address the Committee. If so I invite the honourable member to seek the call.  
STEFFAN BROWNING 
: Thank you— 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: No the member has to call. The member has to call “Mr Chairman”. 
STEFFAN BROWNING 
: Mr Chairman. 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I call the honourable member Steffan Browning. 
STEFFAN BROWNING 
: Thank you. I will smooth my operation as hopefully this national animal identification system will be smoothed as well.  
I was commenting as we broke for dinner on the huge powers that the as yet unidentified quasi - public-private organisation would have. It is good that the organisation has the sector involved with it. It is good that the Crown is involved with it but when it comes to exercising its powers of enforcement I think it would have been better that the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry managed that aspect of it. Essentially we are putting the more likely industrial part of the farming sector to be exercising what are clearly excessive powers over individual and often small property owners. So it will be beholden on the Minister and that original organisation to be getting that right. Otherwise as I have said although we in the spirit of consensus will support this bill we will be back here to remove and to reduce those powers to something that fits better with the New Zealand culture.  
With that I again congratulate the select committee which put a lot of work into it. The powers unfortunately are far too many as they are in the Food Bill. Thank you. 
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 2 in the name of the Hon David Carter be agreed to. 
Amendments agreed to. 
Clauses 1 and 2 Parts 1 to 6 and schedules 1 and 2 as amended agreed to. 
Bill to be reported with amendment presently.