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Food safety of imported produce

Monday August 21st, 2006. 1:28 pm by frog

Sue K had some good coverage over the weekend of this release calling for produce imported from China to be tested for pesticides and other harmful substances after tests conducted by Greenpeace China revealed high levels of contamination with illegal pesticides. New Zealand imports $84 million of food from China every year.

The Chinese Government recently announced an action plan to guarantee food safety at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which is to see high levels of testing and monitoring of the food which makes it to the Olympic village. Which is all very well, but in the meantime food possibly contaminated with illegal pesticides is being eaten in China and exported all over the world. Not good.

frog says

Posted in Economy, Work, & Welfare | Health & Wellbeing | by frog | Mon, August 21st, 2006 |

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2 Responses to “Food safety of imported produce”

  1. tochigi Says:
    August 21st, 2006 at 2:54 pm

    Not directly related to this post, but an interesting article inthe Herald on something that might affect NZ’s economy more and more in the future:
    NZ hit by ‘food miles’ campaign

    “Food miles” pose a risk to the nation’s farming exports to affluent northern hemisphere consumers, says AgResearch’s chief science strategist, Stephen Goldson.

    New Zealand trade officials have said concerns from the environmental lobby over the distance food travels from paddock to plate could undermine efforts to portray the country’s primary produce in those markets as environmentally sustainable.

  2. uk_kiwi Says:
    August 22nd, 2006 at 8:08 pm

    I have always avoided produce from china, spain and eastern europe for this very reason- they are widely believed to use vast amounts of pesticides of dubious origin. Of course it is very easy to choose in the UK (& some european countries) as all produce is required to have country of origin labelling.

    IMHO NZ is a free country- everyone should be free to make educated decisions about what they consume. Information should be available to allow this to happen- such as GM/GE labelling, country of origin etc. The NZFSA has dropped the ball on this one and showed they are in bed with Foodstuffs et al. Their explanation makes no sense!

    Go the Greens, keep pushing this one!

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