KEY POINTS:
Parliament's health select committee showed a scant regard for a new set of realities when deciding this week not to support an appeal for mandatory country-of-origin labelling of food. The call, orchestrated by the Green Party, was far from its first. This one, part of an initiative started 15 months ago to have compulsory labelling on meat, seafood, fruit, vegetables and other "single-component" foods, yielded a petition with 39,000 signatures. But if another campaign began now, that number would surely be dwarfed. Such is the heightened interest in all things to do with food since the tainted-milk-powder scandal in China. Such also is an environment that erases any previous doubts about the case for mandatory labelling.
The committee trotted out a well-rehearsed range of reasoning against compulsion and in favour of voluntary measures. Mandatory labelling might, it said, hurt this country's trading relationships and restrict consumer choice. It might also tell consumers which country food was from but would not guarantee its safety. The latter argument, in particular, retains merit. It does not help, either, that the Greens wrap mandatory labelling together with a Buy NZ campaign. This creates the appearance of a form of trade protection, and a platform for arousing prejudice against foreign food.
Yet any naysaying to compulsion now seems pallid when set beside consumers' growing demand to be able to draw a line between their health concerns and the food they eat. Partly, this is a result of nutritional concerns but, increasingly, it also reflects safety worries. The demand for information became apparent last year when it was discovered Sanitarium's peanut butter was made in China. The company hastily returned to its Australian manufacturer, even though nobody had been reported ill from eating the Chinese product. The same factor encouraged supermarket group Foodstuffs to place country-of-origin labels on all fresh food sold in its stores. Clearly, it believed this would boost sales.
For some time, there have been increasing queries about animal-feed ingredients, especially the variance in standards between countries. But it is the Chinese melamine scare, which now also ensnares Cadbury chocolate products, that has elevated the need for mandatory labelling to a level where it must be met. Safety is now a valid concern. Consumers should be able to choose to boycott products from countries with poor safety records and questionable quality control. Voluntary labelling will provide that option only erratically, at best. If customers are less likely to buy food from a particular country, companies will be reluctant to put labels on their products, and sellers will not want to advertise their origin.
The case against compulsion has also been weakened by the fact that the United States has introduced mandatory labelling. This followed the discovery of melamine contamination of pet food and pig and poultry feed sourced from China. Australia, another major trading partner, had already gone down that path. Both have seen good reason to regulate. On that basis, it's hard to see how its introduction here would hurt trading relationships.
Another argument advanced by some food makers, that of cost, seems equally frail. Clothing manufacturers appeared to cope easily enough when they had to meet compulsory country-of-origin labelling requirements more than a decade ago.
As in clothes, so in food. Consumers have a right to know, as far as possible, the ingredients and origin of any product. Mandatory labelling of food would not be a guarantee of safety or quality, but it is an idea whose time has come. Parliament's health committee should have acknowledged as much.
