Conference
NZ Food Safety Summit 2019 Tuesday 10th December, Auckland
Geoff Webster MNZIFST, Webster Food Consultants
Raniera Bassett and his team did a great job of the greeting – mihi – and followed it with a song – waiata. The warm welcome was appropriate given New Zealand Food Safety’s recent launch of the 5-year Food Safety Strategy. One of the priorities is: “We will work in genuine partnership with Maori.”
Setting the scene Ray Smith, Director, General of MPI, opened with a few key facts: • Our annual agricultural and horticultural exports are over $47 billion • We produce enough food for 50 million people We achieve this via an agricultural system with a relatively low environmental impact, and a biosecurity system admired around the world. This gives us advantages in trade and supports our prosperity. Bryan Wilson, Deputy Director-General of New Zealand Food Safety outlined the 5-year Food Safety Strategy and the accompanying Action Plan. The strategy and action plan were very impressive, as were the brochures and links that support it. You can download them at these links www.mpi.govt.nz/dmsdocument/38951-new-zealand-food-safetystrategy and www.mpi.govt.nz/dmsdocument/38948/direct (the Action Plan) Dr Nick Roskruge, Associate Professor of Horticulture at Massey University, spoke on forming genuine partnerships with Maori. He emphasised that relationships – whakawhanaungatanga - were the key to getting buy-in and outputs from partnerships.
Food fraud Dr Amy Kircher is Director of the Food Protection and Defence Institute at the University of Minnesota. Prior to 9/11, her title may well have been something else, but terrorism has had a profound effect on food safety in the US. Dr Kirchner’s talk did not cover the accidental contamination of food, but instead concerned crimes in the food system and how to combat them. From the time of the ancient Greeks poisons and pathogens have been used as weapons with military or criminal intent. Athenians used plant-based hellebore to poison the wells and water supply of Kirrha. From Spain we had the case of olive oil contaminated with cheap industrial rapeseed oil which killed 600 and left thousands debilitated. Dr Kircher listed the ways people make money out of food fraud or theft and how it exposes us to food safety risks: • Using illegal additives like toxic Sudan Red in chilli powder • Dilution or partial replacement of wines or spirits or the like • Substitution or complete replacement e.g. fish • Fraudulent geographical origin e.g. olive oil, wine • Counterfeit products e.g. Heinz sauce 20
Food New Zealand
• Theft and resale, often by the truck or container load • Intentionally selling sub-specification products A new phenomenon has appeared: attacks on food industry computer systems for nefarious reasons. Fortunately, big data can be turned against criminals, so it works both ways.
Food safety, food standards Dr Tim Jackson is VP Food Safety, Regulatory and Social Compliance at Driscolls in the USA, and was previously with Nestle. He gave many examples of food poisoning outbreaks and showed that the relatively new microbiology tool, Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) is helping to trace and control the organisms responsible for human illness. This technique was hardly on the radar in 2014, but has exploded since then in the USA and there was even a WGS conference in New Zealand this October. Dr Jackson is concerned about the lack of harmonisation of food standards around the world and as an example showed several slides of Maximum Residue Limits for various pesticides and herbicides. The limits between countries vary by several orders of magnitude in some cases, and are a barrier to trade. Fixing problems like this is complicated by the number of large international bodies involved. He gave an interesting account of how to create a strong food safety culture within a company. Through internal leadership, development of competence, and employee involvement, companies can take ownership of their food safety responsibilities.
Food contaminants Dr Steve Hathaway, Chief Scientist, New Zealand Food Safety, spoke about dealing with a lot of emerging issues like microplastics in food, newly discovered chemical contaminants in food, new microbial threats, defending New Zealand’s IP in manuka honey, a change to risk-based meat inspection, and antibiotic resistance. In these fields New Zealand is grappling with the priorities, collecting scientific evidence and reviewing current regulations.
Communication with consumers is critical Dr John Roche, Chief Science Advisor MPI, illustrated the importance of communication to get the truth to consumers in an age where social media and emotive language make this difficult. He made the point that media are so focussed on bad news, that a crisis has to become a “serious crisis” to achieve cut-through. The meat and dairy industries are under attack from well-meaning, but often ill-informed lobbyists. He showed a variety of ways where a message can be misunderstood or not get through. Science-deniers are an important group, and are responsible for anti-vax, anti-GM, anti-fluoride, anti-chlorine, anti-1080 and similar beliefs that are difficult to deal with. Educating consumers is not the answer. We must tell our “good news” stories, we must engage, be humble and empathetic. Philip Houlding, Director, International Policy, MPI provided several interesting facts:
