Food Act 2014
The Food Act is a New Zealand Act of Parliament passed in 2014. It comes into force by 1 March 2016 and progressively replaces the Food Act 1981 over the next three years. It was introduced as the Food Bill 160-2 on 26 May 2010 to make some fundamental changes to New Zealand's domestic food regulatory regime. Significantly, for an export led economic recovery for New Zealand, the domestic food regulatory regime is the platform for exports. The New Zealand domestic standard is used as the basis for negotiating equivalence arrangements with trading partners. This  minimizes the excessive importing country requirements that may be imposed but which do not go to food safety. If passed into law and fully implemented, it would replace the Food Act 1981 and the Food Hygiene Regulations 1974. Food Bill will also make consequential amendments to the Animal Products Act 1999 and the Wine Act 2003 to improve the interface of regulatory processes across food sectors. Food legislation in other common law countries. New Zealand is one of 165 member nations of Codex Alimentarius. Other codex member nations are also passing or are proposing to pass similar legislative changes: Consultation  with the public. The NZFSA (now part of MAF) commenced consultation on the Domestic Food Review in 2004 with a series of public discussion papers. The outcome of the Review was the proposals for the Food Bill. The public were actively consulted with from 2007-2010 on the Domestic Food Review and the Food Bill. This consultation has included forums and consumer groups, discussion papers and public submission processes. The publications and information on the Food Bill have been available throughout this process on the NZFSA website and were used to support consultation. During the public consultation on the Food  Bill by the Primary Production Committee from 22 July to 2 September 2010, 66 submissions were received. These can be viewed on the Parliamentary website (see the link at the end of Q4). An overview of the Domestic Food Review and the Food Bill information is available here: Overview - Reform of New Zealand food regulations Public enquiries by phone and email up until 2010 numbered 1670 and there have been over 70,000 page views for the Domestic Food Review, Food Bill and the Food Control Plan. A Consumers Forum was established in 2002 and met 3-4 times a year  until November 2008 the Domestic Food Review and subsequently the Food Bill were regularly an item on their agenda. The Forum's mailing list included 61 consumer organisations and 88 individual representatives. More information on the Consumers Forum is here: Staying in touch with people Criticism and Public Concern. Concerns have been raised about a number of different aspects of the proposed Food Bill 160-2. They are broadly categorised as: Codex Alimentarius Controversy. Critics say that once Codex standards become law, consumers will have inferior food rules imposed upon them, while food standards and trade will be completely controlled  worldwide. Codex may ultimately: