Food Policy: Greening the Food Basket

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Introduction

How we produce and consume food is of critical importance to the health of New Zealanders and our environment. That’s why food policy lies at the heart of Green policy.

As food prices sky rocket on the back of rising oil prices and global economic instability, many New Zealanders cannot afford to buy healthy food. As basic staples become scarce and expensive, we believe New Zealand needs a national food security strategy which ensures that all New Zealanders can afford to buy healthy, safe, affordable food.

There is a well-established link between diet and health, and there are increasing numbers of people who are allergic to food, sensitive to chemicals, have damaged immune systems or suffer from chronic, diet-related diseases. Poor nutrition and an unhealthy food environment are the most significant causes of preventable deaths in New Zealand. The Ministry of Health estimates that poor diet contributes to 30% of all deaths in New Zealand.

We have created an environment in New Zealand where unhealthy food is more highly promoted, more accessible and more affordable than healthy food. Much of the food that is targeted at children is highly processed food that is high in saturated fat, sugar and salt and low in nutrients, and this unhealthy food makes up an increasing proportion of our children’s diets. Already, fifteen percent of children are obese, and two thirds of our children carry risk factors for future disease.

These trends are responsible for serious health problems, including adult obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, some types of cancer and other diet-related diseases. This puts increasing strains on our health services. The cost to the community, health system and taxpayer is enormous and increasing.

Clearly, if we are to improve the health of our children, we need to create an environment that makes it easier for parents to raise healthy children, and for children to choose healthy food options. At present, even conscientious parents trying to feed their children well find it difficult to compete with the huge amount of advertising aimed at children, encouraging them to eat unhealthy food. At the same time we are neglecting a huge economic opportunity.

New Zealand is recognised as clean, green and nuclear free. We trade on the perception that our food is grown in a safe, natural environment. It is not.

Food production techniques are causing significant damage to our environment, especially our rivers and lakes – 95% of lowland rivers and streams are now unfit for swimming. Millions of animals are suffering in sow crates and battery cages. At the same time, industrial agriculture in New Zealand is rapidly increasing its demands for energy, and the vast amount of food that is imported from across the world is contributing to CO2 emissions and climate change.

Levels of pesticide used here are higher than in many countries. Many other countries ban unsafe pesticides long before New Zealand does. Additives are permitted here which are banned in some other countries. Genetically engineered foods reach our shelves without our knowledge and only intense public pressure led to a weak GE labelling law.

There is no world demand for GE crops or for foods with high pesticide residues. They do not fetch higher prices and consumers only buy these foods if they don’t know what is in them.

New Zealand is at a crossroads. We could keep on the path of industrial food production, selling bulk commodities at low prices. Or we could position ourselves as an organic nation with a determined strategy to support our growers to produce and market the highest quality, clean, green and safe food, making our reputation a reality before we lose it.

There is a huge unsatisfied demand for certified organic production. It pays a substantial premium. Market barriers that exist for conventional produce melt away for certified organic food. If we allow the release of GE into our food and environment we lose an opportunity forever.

Food policy is also about democracy. Citizens have a fundamental right to know what is in their food and where it comes from, and to participate in decisions about what will be allowed. They have a fundamental right to purchase local foods if they want to, and to have a government that supports that right through mandatory country of origin labelling of food. We cannot allow the imposed rules of a world trade club most New Zealanders did not choose to join to override our rights to information or to health.

Instead of continuing down the path of industrial food production, selling bulk commodities at low prices, we want to encourage organic production and locally produced food, which is grown as much as possible in harmony with the environment, and which is marketed in a manner that provides a satisfactory return to growers, instead of leaving them powerless and struggling to keep producing. We also want to complement this with a sustained public health strategy to turn healthy choices into easy and affordable choices, especially for our children.

Increasingly consumers are becoming aware of the impact of their dietary choices on the environment. Our dietary environmental footprint is affected by many factors including; how food is produced, levels of greenhouse gases emitted during production, the kinds of food eaten, how far it has to travel to reach us, and the levels of processing and packaging. All of these factors need to be taken into account in determining the environmental impact of our diets and consumers need access to good information on relative contribution of these factors in order to be able to make informed and responsible choices.

Over the last three years the Green party has secured funding for a 12 million Nutrition Food for schools, a $3 million Organics Advisory Service; the establishment of a comprehensive antibiotic resistant surveillance system including for food-producing animals, increased surveillance of imported foods. We have also helped initiate a Select Committee inquiry into Type 2 diabetes and obesity. But there is a long way to go before we have sustainable local production that provides us with food that is healthy and affordable.

Vision

The Green Party envisions an organic nation where:

• The food we eat is both safe and affordable and contributes to our health and the health of our children: all people, regardless of income, have access to sufficient, healthy, nutritious and affordable food.

• The food we eat is produced sustainably in a manner that does not harm the environment, and reduces our carbon emissions and reliance on oil, whilst providing satisfactory economic returns to our growers and local independent food processors and retailers.
• Half of New Zealand’s production is certified organic by 2020, and the remainder is in the process of conversion.
• In this future, New Zealand is a healthier nation without epidemics of obesity, type 2 diabetes or other food-related chronic health problems.

Key Principles

The Green Party's key principles in relation to food affordability, sustainability, democracy, safety and nutrition include:

1. Encouraging healthy eating amongst New Zealanders, especially children, and ensure that consumers in all income groups have access to affordable, healthy and nutritious food.

2. Regaining control of our food supply by producers and consumers.
3. Ensuring that New Zealanders are fully informed about what it is our food, know where it comes from and are able to exercise informed choice about the food we consume, including the impact of food choices on the environment
4. Cleaning up our food supply to reduce food-related risks from pesticides, antibiotics, growth hormones, food additives, and food-borne disease.
5. Ensuring our food is sustainably produced with minimum harm to the environment

Key Policy

The Green Party will establish a Food Commission to:

• help improve access to highly quality, nutritious, locally produced and affordable food;

• reduce the carbon footprint of the food we consume ;
• reduce the environmental impact of food we consume;
• support the development of vibrant local food economies by providing support and funding for community initiatives to establish and run community gardens, public fruit orchards, farmers markets, community supported agriculture;
• develop and oversee a food security strategy; and
• protect the genetic diversity of vegetable seeds and fruit trees.

Specific Policy Points

1. Ensuring food is affordable

Addressing income inadequacy

Purchasing healthy food is becoming increasingly difficult for many people because of the inadequacy of their incomes to meet rising costs of food, transport and housing. This affects both beneficiaries and those in low-wage employment.

The Green Party will address income inadequacy by:

1. Setting the minimum wage at no less than 66% of the average wage. This would increase the current minimum wage of $12 an hour to $15 an hour.

2. Protecting welfare benefit levels by indexing rates to a basket of food, energy and housing price indices and legislating for a benefit level floor to ensure main benefits cannot fall below a fixed percentage of the average wage.

Supporting consumers and producers

The Green Party will:

3. Call for a Commerce Commission Food Price Inquiry that will consider recommendations to ensure farmers and consumers are treated fairly.

4. Provide stronger competition laws.
5. Supporting farmers markets, community gardens, community supported agriculture initiatives, heritage seed banks and fruit tree distribution.
6. Supporting local independent food processing and retailing.
7. Develop a food security strategy to reduce our dependence on global markets.

2. Ensuring food is sustainably produced

The Green Party will work to improve the sustainability of New Zealand’s food supply by:

1. Encouraging farming of a diverse range of food for local consumption to reduce transport costs, fossil fuel consumption and our carbon footprint.

2. Supporting and encouraging organic, GM-free, biodiverse agriculture.
3. Cleaning up rivers and keeping them free of pollution.
4. Reducing use of toxic and persistent pesticides.
5. Preventing the growing of GM crops.

3. Encouraging Healthy Eating, especially by children

A balanced, healthy diet is essential to good health. High sugar, high fat, low fibre and low nutrient foods are becoming the staple diet of an increasing number of our children. Fifteen (15) percent of children are already obese and two thirds of our children carry risk factors for future disease.

International research shows that poor nutrition is a key risk factor for obesity and childhood ill-health. It also shows that bad eating habits formed in early childhood tend to continue into adulthood; these can literally condemn a child to a lifetime of ill health.

Schools and early childhood services centres can have a positive influence on children and young people’s lifestyle choices and behaviour. Nutritional guidelines will be developed so that all food and drink sold in schools is healthy and nutritious and does not contribute to obesity, diabetes, or dental decay.

The Green Party will:

1. Make teaching of nutrition, basic cooking and gardening skills, and the origins and production of food part of the core curriculum, including creating productive organic fruit and vegetable gardens at all primary schools.

2. Undertake high profile, multi-media nutrition education campaigns aimed at parents and children; this will include promoting healthy foods such as fresh fruit and vegetables, and positive nutritional messages on television.
3. Encourage learning by providing nutritious healthy foods and lunches in schools, school tuck shops, and vending machines. This will be also achieved by:
   
   1. Removing fizzy drinks, sugary drinks, lollies, and chippies from sale on school property.

   2. Installing filtered water systems in all schools.
   3. Extending the fruit programme to provide free fruit to all primary schools and early childhood services.
   4. Establishing a cross-sector working party to investigate how free healthy breakfasts can be provided in all primary schools and early childhood services.
4. Prohibit the funding of health services by food companies that sell or promote unhealthy high fat, high sugar food.
5. Require publicly funded hospitals and healthcare organizations to set an example of healthy eating by only selling and promoting healthy food and drink that meets nutritional guidelines and is not high in sugar or fat.
6. To improve children’s diets the Green Party will:
   
   1. Develop a national strategy and action plan to encourage healthy eating amongst our children.

   2. Investigate and monitor the increase in, and impact on children’s eating habits of, sponsorship, advertising and promotion in schools by companies promoting food that does not meet nutritional guidelines.
   3. Extend nutrition and ingredient information labelling to fast food, take-away and delicatessen food.
   4. Review all maximum residue limits for pesticides and additives and setting them on the basis of children’s tolerances, not adult ones.
   5. Develop criteria to identify whether food or drink is detrimental to, or promotes, children's health.
   6. Provide free fruit to all primary schools, and teaching of nutrition, cooking and gardening skills.
   7. Require all food sold on school premises or at school sporting functions to meet the criteria for food and drink that promotes children's health.
   8. Ensure schools provide nutritious, healthy foods and lunches in schools, school tuck shops, and vending machines.
7. Restrict the flood of ads for unhealthy foods by prohibiting advertising of unhealthy food on TV before 8.30 at night.
8. Implement the Health Ministry’s Healthy Eating, Healthy Action strategy.
9. Publish an annual Children’s Food Promotion plan that sets out how the Ministry intends to develop an environment in New Zealand that supports children to make healthy eating choices.
10. Develop and publish nutritional criteria to identify which food or drinks are considered to be nutritious and would be recommended as a routine part of a healthy, balanced diet, and which would not be recommended as a routine part of children’s diet.
11. Develop a ‘traffic light’ labelling system to enable consumers to quickly identify healthy food.
12. Develop and publish national nutritional standards and guidelines with which all schools shall comply, and which ensure that only healthy food and drink is sold in schools.
13. Ensure that all food and drink advertisements screened on television meet the criteria for nutritious food that is recommended as a routine part of a healthy, balanced diet.
14. Develop recommended daily intakes for children for fat, saturated fat, sugar, salt and key nutrients.

3. Ensuring we know what we’re eating

Safeguarding our right to know

The Green Party believes we have a right to know what is in the food we eat, where it has come from and how it has been produced. In the sections above we have made specific commitments to ensure full labelling in relation to GE ingredients, food irradiation and residue and additive information.

To further protect and enhance our right to know the Green Party will also:

1. Investigate the most practical and cost-effective way to provide nutrition and ingredient information for fast food, take-away and delicatessen food.

2. Introduce mandatory minimum standards for organic production, making it illegal to claim food is organic when it has not been produced to this standard.
3. Enact 'right to know' legislation based on the following principles:
   
   1. The consumer's right to know requires labelling that is informative and easy to understand, with all ingredients and additives listed.

   2. The consumer has a right to know what pesticides, growth hormones and other controversial feeding practises have been used in the production of each food item, and the levels of residues in it.
   3. Mandatory country of origin labelling: the consumer has a right to know if food has been imported and from which countries it comes. Food that has been imported is more likely to have been subjected to post-harvest pesticide treatment. For example tomatoes imported from Australia are dipped in the organophosphate insecticide dimethoate. The consumer must be able to identify these tomatoes so that they can avoid them if they wish.

Protecting our sovereign right to set our own standards

Most decisions regarding food standards and the labelling of foods in New Zealand are made by Foods Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ). New Zealand currently has one vote out of ten and is treated like a state of Australia.

To regain our sovereignty over food, the Green Party will:

4. Renegotiate the ANZFA Treaty, so that New Zealand is represented as a sovereign state, not as the equivalent of an Australian state, and has equal voting and representation with Australia.

5. Widen the Opt Out provisions of the ANZFA Treaty, so that New Zealand can opt out of a food standard on grounds of consumers' right to know, or consumer protection.

Review the Mandate of the Food Safety Authority

The New Zealand Food Safety Authority has a conflict of interest between its mandate to facilitate agricultural exports on the one hand, and consumer public health protection on the other. Experience has shown that it repeatedly favours its mandate to support export trade, at the expense of consumers – for example by repeatedly undermining efforts to get country mandatory country of origin labelling on food.

To ensure consumer confidence in our food safety systems, the Green Party will:

6. Review the objectives of the Food Safety Authority so that it focuses exclusively on consumers and public health protection, not the promotion of exports (a function that can be picked up by MAF).

7. Require that consumers and independent health professionals are adequately represented on all bodies that set food standards or make decisions that affect the quality of the food we eat.

4. Cleaning up our food supply

Reducing food-borne diseases

New Zealand has the highest rates of Campylobacter poisoning of any Western country. This is about twice the rate of similar countries. About one in every 300 New Zealanders develop Campylobacter poisoning each year, and over 800 end up in hospital each year as a result of Campylobacter poisoning.

Most Campylobacter poisoning comes from the consumption of chicken meat. A Consumers Institute survey found that four out of five fresh chickens sold in New Zealand were contaminated with Salmonella or Campylobacter bacteria. We can reduce this intolerable level of contamination.

To help reduce food-borne diseases the Green Party will:

1. Develop a national strategy to clean up the food chain and systematically eliminate hazards and risks of infection.

2. As part of this strategy the Green Party will:
   
   1. Aim to reduce the incidence of Campylobacter and Salmonella contamination in the food chain by 50% over the next five years

   2. Focus initially on poultry rearing and processing plants.
   3. Require the phase-in of state of the art food safety management including mandatory Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point, or HACCP (pronounced hassip), systems.
   4. Establish a definitive policy for controlling Mycobacterium avium Paratuberculosis (MAP) in NZ sheep and dairy herds.

Reducing contamination from antibiotic-resistant bacteria

Antibiotic resistance in bacteria is a serious and growing problem. We now know different types of bacteria exchange genes, including the genes for antibiotic resistance. Routinely feeding animals antibiotics to speed growth and prevent disease outbreaks appears to be one cause of the rapid spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

To reduce this potentially serious risk to our public health, the Green Party will:

3. Set up a high-level panel of experts in antibiotic resistance to advise the Minister of Food on how to decrease the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria through the food chain.

4. Phase out the routine feeding of antibiotics to animals that are not sick, and the use of antibiotics (such as streptomycin) as routine sprays on crops.
5. Introduce random testing of chicken meat to ensure it is not contaminated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
6. Introduce random testing of high-risk imported food to ensure it is not contaminated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
7. Fund annual prevalence studies to assess the extent to which antibiotic-resistant bacteria are found in animals and humans.

Reducing contamination from pesticide residues in food

About 60% of our food is contaminated with pesticide residues, according to government food surveys, including residues of at least 17 pesticides that are known to cause cancer, birth defects, and liver, kidney and immune system damage.

To help eliminate adverse effects from pesticides and their residues the Green Party will:

8. Reduce pesticide use by 50% within five years, with annual monitoring and reports on progress.

9. In consultation with consumers, growers and manufacturers, set a timetable to phase out the most toxic and persistent pesticides, including all pesticides that have been identified by the US EPA or the EU as being possible and probable carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, and acutely toxic organophosphate insecticides.
10. Review all Maximum Residue Limits for pesticides, and set new limits on the basis of children's tolerances, not adults’ tolerances (as at present).
11. Ensure all human health criteria for pesticide registration and regulation are based on safety for infants and the developing foetus, rather than adults.
12. Undertake annual surveys of domestic produce to test for pesticide residues and other contamination.
13. Routinely test imported food to ensure it does not contain illegal pesticide residues. No such testing is done at present.
14. Levy all toxic and hazardous substances, in proportion to their toxicity and persistence in the environment. This levy will help fund organics research and the cleaning up of contaminated sites.
15. Amend the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act to deregister or ban the registration of particular pesticides where safer alternatives exist.
16. Review the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Act and the Resource Management Act to determine the best way of creating a legal duty to ensure the least harmful methods of weed, pest and disease management are employed.
17. Make cross-boundary trespass of pesticides an offence under civil law.
18. Support organic food production

Keep Food Irradiation out of New Zealand

The Green Party believes New Zealand should remain an Irradiation-Free Nation. To this end the Green Party will:

19. Maintain a ban on food irradiation within New Zealand.

20. Ensure any imported food that is irradiated is clearly labelled as such; work towards a permanent ban on irradiated food imports.
21. Support research into alternative treatments to irradiation to extend the life of fresh produce.

Eliminate Growth Hormones in food

22. The Green Party will phase out the use of growth hormones to make animals grow more quickly or produce more food.

The Green Party’s position is that genetic engineering (GE) should occur within a contained laboratory setting only. Our food and our environment must be kept GE Free. To this end, the Green Party will:

23. Ban the commercial release and field trials of GE organisms.

24. Prohibit field-testing or production of GE foods within New Zealand.
25. Require any imported food containing any GE ingredients to be clearly labelled, and work towards a ban on GE food imports.
26. Require safety testing for any imported GE food or commodity that is allowed to enter the New Zealand food supply.
27. Allow gene technology in secure containment to continue to be used subject to assessment by the Environmental Risk Management Agency.

Preventing BSE (Mad Cow Disease)

No cases of BSE have been reported in New Zealand, and we want to keep it that way. To further reduce the risk of BSE entering New Zealand, we need to follow World Health Organisation advice and global best practice.

In addition to present safeguards the Green Party will:

28. Prohibit the use of mechanically recovered meat in the food chain.

29. Require high temperature rendering at all rendering plants.
30. Remove high-risk material from carcasses before they enter the food chain.
31. Allow imports of cattle semen and embryos from certified organic herds only.
32. Prohibit the use of the ground-up remains of sheep and cows as stock feed.

Play it safe with food additives

To better ensure the safety of food containing food additives the Green Party will:

33. Ensure that additives that have been found to have a significant risk of causing cancer are not registered for use in New Zealand.

34. Revise the acceptable daily intake of all additives so that they are based on children's tolerances, not adult tolerances.
35. Require products that contain sulphites, monosodium glutamate, aspartame, cyclamates, and caffeine to be labelled as such regardless of the amount.

5. Minimising the impact of dietary choices on the environment

It is becoming increasingly apparent from many studies that our dietary choices have a significant impact on the environment.

Ecological footprint analysis of food takes into account the amount of land needed to provide the resources to produce food, both directly on the farm and indirectly from the energy that goes into growing, harvesting, processing, packaging and transporting it. Ecological footprinting is a tool that can help consumers make informed dietary choices in order to reduce the environmental impact of what they eat.

Studies show that the majority of the ecological footprint of food comes from food processing, storage, packaging and growing conditions. In addition plant-based diets are recognised as having a reduced impact on the environment as less land is used to produce the same number of food calories.

For example, a cow eats five plant calories to produce one milk calorie, and 10 plant calories to produce one calorie of beef.

Societies whose food energy comes mostly from starchy plants rather than livestock have smaller environmental impacts because they only require about a quarter the land area to produce the same number of food calories

From a global perspective, the New Zealand way of life is not sustainable because the world cannot afford to follow our dietary and land use patterns. The typical Western diet could support less than 2.5 billion people – which is less than half the world's current population.

The Green Party will:

1. Promote research into ecological footprint analysis of New Zealand diets, including the relative contribution of plant-based and animal-based diets (including seafood) and methods of food production, processing and food miles on ecological footprints.
   For more detail relating to seafood, see our Sea and Oceans policy document.

2. Promote, by labelling and education, dietary choices that have a reduced impact on the environment, recognising that these will differ in different places. For most people in New Zealand this will involve eating more locally grown organically produced food with less processing or packaging and eating less meat and animal fat.