However, that has not been Act’s record to date.  It has continually favoured businesses’ right to obfuscate and confuse over consumers’ right to information.  It will be interesting to see whether Roy, if appointed to this post, continues to oppose measures such as country of origin labelling or whether she takes what I would suggest would be a more liberal line, and advocates consumers the right to make rational informed market place choices.

Question 10. Women do the vast majority of cooking and shopping, and increases in food prices are a burden borne disproportionately by women. What do you think our government can or should do to ensure that everyone has access to good food?

Food labelling of ingredients including place of origin and a bit of community gardening – not so much for the food but for the fun!

That corresponds with the Otago Daily Times earlier this week, which opined:

What is inconsistent about the opposition to country-of-origin food labelling is that the rationale of New Zealand food exporters in claiming the benefits from the “clean, green” imagery ensures New Zealand-produced food is so-labelled, with few exceptions.

The “Made in New Zealand” is a proud and valuable label indeed.

Yet in this country it is far easier to find out where your shirt was made than where your breakfast originated…

But it does not really matter why consumers decide to buy or not to buy food for there could be any number of reasons, rational and irrational, and they may have nothing whatever to do with food safety.

Some people, for instance, want to ensure the food they eat has the least possible “carbon footprint”.

They should be able to make informed decisions about their purchases, whatever they may be, without difficulty, and if there is an extra national economic benefit, so much the better.

Jeanette Fitzsimons: Can the Minister tell us what routine tests New Zealand applies for detecting melamine in dairy products imported from China; if there are none, how can she deny New Zealand consumers the right to know where their food comes from, so they can make their own decisions?

Hon LIANNE DALZIEL: No country routinely checks dairy products for melamine. This has been a situation that has arisen in China in respect of the addition of melamine in the chain of supply, and, as I made the point the other day, one of the products we found that might potentially have had dairy product from China in it had come via Australia. The product did not, in fact, have melamine in it, so I hasten to reassure people about that. But the product had the country-of-origin labelling that is required in Australia, and that labelling said: “Made from domestic and imported products.�, and therefore it did not assist in identifying whether the product came from China.

So the answer is that the government says you don’t need to worry about where your food comes from because New Zealand food safety standards will ensure all food is safe.  Except when they don’t test for poisons like melamine.  In those circumstances you’re not allowed to know either.

It’s hard to believe that both the Labour and National parties oppose something as basic as our right to know where our food comes from. We have country of origin labelling for footwear, clothing and wine – so we can work out where our jandals and tee shirts come from – but not our food. Why on earth not?

Incredibly our food authority the New Zealand Food Safety Authority opposes it- it says it conflicts with our free trade liberalisation policy and could somehow interfere with our export markets!

What nonsense! Most exporters proudly display made in New Zealand on our exports – they say it gives them a competitive advantage. And all our major trading partners have country of origin labelling. So if it doesn’t interfere with their exports, how could it interfere with ours?

NZFSA says country of origin labelling should be left to producers to use as a marketing tool, if they so wish!

Can you believe it! So if it suited a manufacturer or retailer they could have a label, but if it didn’t they need not.

All other forms of labelling are underpinned by regulation – our ingredients and nutrition labels, for example. Country of origin labelling of fresh food should be the same. There’s virtually no cost in point of sale labelling of fresh produce and its simple to implement – just put a label near the cauliflowers.

So let’s get on with it.

Visit our Safe Food Campaign webpage for more information.

For instance last year we imported 1,839 tonnes of garlic from China. This has helped to decimate New Zealand’s once thriving garlic growing industry. Meanwhile the tomatoes we import from Australia are dipped in the toxic insecticide dimethoate but New Zealand tomatoes aren’t. Dimethoate cannot be removed by washing and has been linked to disruption of reproductive function, chromosomal aberrations and immune system damage.

Here’s a list of reasons you might want to know where your food came from: health, environment, nutrition, safety, buy local, ethics, personal preference, taste.So, no wonder then that Sue Kedgley was able to collect 39,000 signatures on her Consumers Right to Know Country of Origin Labelling petition that she presented to Parliament today. 

I’ll leave commenters to draw up a list of why you might want to hide this information from consumers.