2. SUE KEDGLEY (Green) Link to this
to the Minister of Consumer Affairs
If country-of-origin labelling remains voluntary for single-ingredient foods—such as fruit, vegetables, meat, and fish—then how will the Government guarantee that all such labels are fair and accurate?
Hon HEATHER ROY (Minister of Consumer Affairs) Link to this
The accuracy and fairness of country-of-origin labelling, like the labelling of other goods, is regulated by the Fair Trading Act. This requires that information about goods must not be misleading or deceptive.
Is it not the case that if labelling remains voluntary, and there are no minimum mandatory standards that retailers are required to meet, there will actually be no way of guaranteeing that unscrupulous retailers do not mislabel imported products as products of New Zealand, and there will be no way of ensuring that the more than 1,000 retailers of fresh food actually bother to label their fresh produce?
We are a small, reasonably well-educated economy. We are often able to achieve through voluntary means what other jurisdictions can achieve only through compulsion. The industry has shown, as indicated, a willingness to participate in a voluntary code; in fact, some supermarkets have already started. Given that there is increasing demand from the public to know where their food comes from, I put this issue on my work plan in January this year. Subsequently, the Prime Minister asked me to progress work on voluntary country-of-origin labelling of wholefoods, and I have set up a working group to explore the options around this issue. The working group is led by me. Its other members are the Minister for Food Safety, the Minister of Agriculture, and the Minister of Trade. Our respective officials have begun work and have been in discussions with retailers.
Why, when country-of-origin labelling is mandatory for clothing, footwear, and wine, should it be voluntary for food, especially when other food labelling, such as ingredients and nutrition labelling, is mandatory and underpinned by a regulatory standard?
My understanding is that the mandatory requirement for clothing and footwear to be labelled was an initiative that was put in by a previous Government quite some time ago, in the early stages of a “made in New Zealand” campaign. Things have moved on significantly since that stage, and, as I indicated in my last answer, due to an increasing demand from the public to know where their food comes from, I have put the issue on my work plan. A working group is dealing with the issue now.
Why, when she is Minister of a department whose main role is to encourage the provision of accurate information between suppliers and consumers, would she not support consumers’ right to know where their food comes from and to be confident that labels are fair and accurate, especially when point-of-sale labelling of fresh foods is very easy and cheap to implement?
The reason I set up a working group is to explore the issues. We want to see consistent guidelines put in place so that it is easy for retailers to conform in a voluntary capacity. I have every confidence, based on discussions that I have had to date with retailers, that they are willing to put things in place. It is important, in my position as Minister of Consumer Affairs, to ensure that information is easy to access for consumers. I am confident that a voluntary regime—as supported by the Labour Party, the National Party, and the ACT Party—is enough to cover this issue.
I seek leave to table a document showing 47 countries that have mandatory labelling of fresh produce.
Mr SPEAKER