MP to beef up law
Consumer Affairs Minister Kris Faafoi says he will use his ministerial powers to change proposed country of origin labelling rules.
A pared-back version of the proposed law was released in July and drew criticism for leaving out foods like bacon, much of which is made from imported pork.
If the revised bill became law, Faafoi said he would use his ministerial powers to put products like bacon back on the mandatory labelling list, Radio New Zealand reported.
Faafoi had planned to put up an amendment during the legislative process but said using his authority under the Fair Trading Act was a simpler process.
Australia introduced strict country of origin labelling rules on July 1 and a New Zealand policy could be modelled on those, he said.
Faafoi’s comments follow those of Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor, who said last month if the select committee didn’t come up with a bill that was useful for consumers, he would introduce an alternative.
‘‘If the bill is going to go round and round in circles at select committee, I’m prepared to introduce one from government,’’ O’Connor said.
‘‘If it’s not useful, we’ll come up with a better one.’’
Although some supermarkets were voluntarily labelling food products, the practice was not consistent.
‘‘In Australia, they’ve got multi-ingredient labelling so you’ve got a reasonably good idea of where it’s from and where it’s packed and processed,’’ he said.
However, even under the new labelling laws, pork products remained a grey area in Australia. Packaging on products like bacon could now include a kangaroo trademark and a graph showing the percentage of Australian content in the product.
But because the pork meat was imported and then processed in Australia, most products were able to display the ‘‘Made in Australia’’ kangaroo badge, regardless of their percentage of local ingredients. More than 60 per cent of pork products consumed in New Zealand were imported. Almost a third of imported pork came from Canada, while Spain was second with 20.3 per cent and Finland provided 10.2 per cent.
In its original form, the Consumers Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill would have covered all single ingredient foods.
The amended version released by the Primary Production Committee would only cover single types of fruit, vegetables, meat, fish or seafood which have been minimally processed.
Foods like fresh tomatoes, frozen sliced beans and minced beef would require country of origin labels.
However, nuts, seeds and grains, tinned fruit and vegetables, mixed frozen vegetables, crumbed fish fillets, marinated meats, dried fruit, and cured meats would not.