Pāmu and Meet the Need Launch Mince Recipe Cards for Food Banks
A partnership between state-owned enterprise Pāmu (Landcorp Farming Limited) and charity Meet the Need is putting more than quality New Zealand beef into food bank parcels this year.
That’s the challenge NZ Food Safety Authority head Vincent Arbuckle faces on an almost daily basis.
The authority is part of MPI and has an important role in ensuring that food exports meet the NZ standards and comply with the regulations in countries where a product is being exported to, as well as making sure that any food imports comply with our rules and regulations.
Arbuckle says understandably there is a lot of pressure on companies to get product to market faster and there is pressure therefore on regulators such as his to do their job as quickly and efficiently as possible. Today he says they are far more alert to that pressure and are working hard to speed up the process.
“But we can’t throw the baby out with the bath water and cut corners,” he told Rural News.
“Our bottom line is protecting NZ food production and that products going to export markets are safe and compliant with the rules of the importing country. Our focus has to be on the real, not the imagined risk,” he says.
In the past year the Ministry of Regulation looked at the operation of the Food Safety Authority and the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) and recommended that they work more closely together, and this is now happening. The goal is that while the two regulators have different roles, they must appear as seamless to the industry because products often go through approval processes in both organisations.
Arbuckle says a strong relationship has now been established between the two regulators with both parties keeping each other informed about the progress of applications through their respective systems.
He says his organisation is well aligned with the primary sector and understands their need to get products to market as quickly as possible, but he says they need to be clear about the risks of any products they use to produce the food.
“We look at it from a trade and sector perspective. For example, the dairy and red meat sectors are very dependent on us to make sure we are not exposing ourselves to serious risks. If there was a major problem in markets such as China, the US or the EU it could be catastrophic for us,” he says.
Building Trust
Arbuckle says a big part of his group's role is to give assurance to trading partners and to build up an understanding of each other's farming system and what chemical or product may or may not be acceptable.
For example, he says a product acceptably used in a feedlot system will possibly be unacceptable in our pasture-based system.
He says there is a need to be aware of any differences in withholding periods.
Arbuckle says customers such as China come to NZ on a regular basis to get proof of what we are doing. He says they will inspect premises and conduct tests on products and if they find something there that is wrong it can become a problem.
"The aim in all of this is to get the trust of our trading partners," he says.
