KEY POINTS:
Despire the latest food contamination crisis in China, this one ensnaring our flagship food exporter, Fonterra, the Government continues to reject calls for country-of-origin food labelling. It will add to the cost, we're told, and interfere with trade relations with other countries.
Strange, then, that neither of these problems stopped the home of free trade, and one of our major trading partners, the United States, introducing from today, mandatory labelling of a wide range of food products, including beef, pork, lamb, chicken, goat meat, fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables, peanuts, pecans, ginseng and macadamia nuts. Fish and shellfish are already subject to American labelling rules.
Our own Minister for Food Safety, Lianne Dalziel, was in the House last week defending the status quo, saying that high-risk foods could enter New Zealand from anywhere and that the NZ Food Safety Authority, rather than compulsory labelling.
At the same time, she acknowledged that the authority did not routinely check dairy products for melamine, the pollutant in the Chinese milk powder.
Nor, she added, does any other country's food watchdog, which is a fair point. But even if the authority could be relied upon to be an infallible safety filter for all known and unknown health threats, which it can't, there's still a case for the Government humouring us worry-warts and agreeing to country-of-origin labelling.
They can call it irrational if they want, but given the amount of taxpayers' money spent on promoting this country and all its fine food products overseas as "pure", is it any wonder that the advertising hype has rubbed off on us as well? Many of us are now convinced that eating "pure" is better. And thank God for the economy that we do.
After all, if we don't believe the big sell that Kiwi wine and cervena and lamb chops and salmon are the world's best food products, what hope is there of convincing consumers on the other side of the globe?
Since the melamine crisis erupted, some people have been unable to resist using it to turn the blowtorch on the whole Chinese system, portraying the crisis as an inevitable outcome of a dictatorial government and low-wage economy. I prefer to keep it simple and selfish. I'm just interested in knowing a little about what I put into my mouth.
Call it informed choice, with a dash of patriotism thrown in. I buy Kerikeri oranges rather than the flashier overseas navels for reasons of superior taste - and Buy Kiwi impulses. And who wants to buy puny cloves of cheap Chinese garlic when the local monsters are available?
Practically everyone but me, it would seem, which is why the local product is rapidly disappearing from the market. But that's choice, and why shouldn't we be allowed it when choosing our foodstuffs?
Last month the Soil and Health Association presented evidence to the Health Select Committee that residues of the insecticide dip dimethoate had been found on Australian tomatoes, capsicums and zucchinis bought at New Zealand supermarkets. In one instance, the offending capsicum was labelled "Product of New Zealand".
A zucchini bought in Blenheim had twice the maximum residue level allowed by the Food Safety Authority.
Not that buying New Zealand produce is necessarily any safer. The Soil and Health tests uncovered a "rogue grower in Marlborough" whose cucumbers, cherry tomatoes and capsicums had pesticide residues above the maximum permitted levels.
Still, it's surely easier to root out a local offender for "correction" than to rely on the international market or the Food Safety Authority's leaky border controls.
None of this keeps me awake at night. I didn't toss my peanut butter out after it was revealed a while back that it came from China. But I was grumpy to discover the expensive bacon I bought with idyllic rural scenes and "Produce of New Zealand" stamped on it turned out to be slices of foreign pig. Around 40 per cent of pig meat is imported, possibly fed on growth hormones and other drugs not allowed here.
The Greens claim Chinese shrimps and prawns - 25 per cent of our imports of these products - have been found elsewhere to contain all sorts of potentially toxic chemical residues. But none are tested here.
Given what I've ingested over the years, a little more DDT or growth hormone is unlikely to affect my wellbeing. But that's a decision I'd like to be able to make
Americans can now decide for themselves, as can our neighbour in Australia, which has been phasing in countr-of-origin labelling since December 2006.
Since 1992, any clothing or footwear imported into New Zealand has had to carry a label in English in lettering "not less that 1.5mm in height" stating its country of origin - and trade hasn't ground to a halt. So why not food?
