Food Bill: what’s the fuss?
Home » Magazine » Good, issue 21 » Food Bill: what’s the fuss?There’s grumbling over garden fences about a new bill before parliament. Andy Kenworthy takes a closer look
Image by Martin Cathrae via Flickr
TThe Food Bill was brought to parliament by Minister for Food Safety Kate Wilkinson in 2010, and is making its slow passage into law, passing its first reading last July. The Bill will replace the Food Act 1981, removing some of the bureaucracy and red tape stuck on it over the years.
People outside the food industry are concerned because it includes bartering in its definition of trading. There's been talk of bans on bartering, restrictions on seed saving and scaremongering about armed raids on organic food stores.
Should we be worried? On the face of it, the Bill seems to suggest that people swapping or sharing garden produce or seeds, or running a charity cake stall, might have to comply with the same new regulations as the local supermarket.
However, specific exemptions within the Bill mean this is unlikely. They define the activities that will not need to be registered or comply with the new regulations for commercial food producers and premises. Instead, non-binding ‘food handler guidance’ (aka a pamplet) will be provided. The police, it seems, will not bust your sausage sizzle. One exemption of the bill is for selling food as a charity or community fundraiser fewer than 20 times a year. Another is for more regular food trading for charitable purposes if that's only a small part of the activities of the person selling, or the organisation they represent. The example in the bill is a permanent stall selling donated food at a hospice. The exemption applies to every charitable purpose that benefits the community, (including such things as poverty relief, educational or religious causes).
So in a nutshell – a bunch of neighbours selling sandwiches to buy some new swings for the park will receive guidelines so they don’t poison anybody. Similarly, your monthly cake stall on behalf of the local cat home is in the clear – provided you don’t deliberately or negligently include the contents of the litter tray. People who sell or barter food fewer than 20 times a year for ‘personal development’ are also only to be issued with food safety information. These are defined as relating “to the intellectual, emotional, physical, social, cultural, or other personal development of a person or members of a group”. This could include almost anything from producing food as an educational hobby to fostering community by swapping scones.
It is arguable whether ‘20 times a year’ is a fair threshold at which an activity would be deemed commercial. But other suggestions like selecting a particular dollar turnover as the trigger could be just as difficult to enforce.
And enforcement is really the key to how the law will work in practice. Presumably, the government won’t employ people to snoop on how many times you swap oranges for home-made lemonade over the back fence, but they might be interested if you sell apple juice every week at the farmers’ market.
Theoretically, if you have a food stall at your gate and more than 20 people buy something, it must be registered as a food production business and comply with all the new regulations, which seems a bit harsh. And for charities, how ‘small’ does the food trading have to be to be exempt? What if you have a small cafe instead of a stall?
It’s dangerous to allow badly constructed laws to pass on the assumption that some of it won’t be enforced. The Food Bill needs amending so that activities currently unfairly captured are exempt. But the alternatives to a law like this are also ludicrous: either no regulations at all, or everybody who deals with food – including parents feeding their kids – complying with the same regulations.
Although this bill is not as draconian as some make out, we certainly need to take a closer look at it and make any concerns known before it becomes law.
Find out more at www.foodsafety.govt.nz
