Tastes great, but where's it from?

BY LAURA BASHAM

Increasingly, consumers are demanding to know where their food comes from and how it is produced. Laura Basham looks at what producers are doing about traceability.

An important lesson can be learnt from the piggery controversy that erupted last week.

It's about traceability. When consumers find out about where their food comes from and don't like what they see, they are turned off.

After TVNZ's Sunday programme showing intensive pig farming, it wasn't just the pigs squealing.

Consumers were suddenly asking butchers where their pork and bacon came from, and animal welfare campaigners were demanding changes to animal welfare laws and farming practices.

It brought home the power of the consumer and the need for farming best practices.

Traceability - being able to show consumers where their food comes from and how it is produced - is an issue Nelson primary producers know well. Our apple growers now strive for nil chemical residues in their fruit to satisfy German supermarket shoppers, and our dairy farmers spend thousands on effluent management so they can't be accused of dirty dairying.

Farmers and growers who export know that they not only have to have squeaky-clean best-farming practices, they have to be able to prove it too.

That's what traceability is all about: having an audited trail to show where the product has come from.

Here's what our primary sectors are doing on traceability.

Apples

The pipfruit industry has a good story to tell on traceability. Every box of apples packed in New Zealand gets an end carton label on it so it can be traced all the way through the supply chain. It means that a box of apples sent to a British supermarket can be traced back to the orchard row where it was picked in Nelson.

The label information includes the apple variety, the export grade, how many pieces in the carton, the grower, the block where the fruit was picked and when, and details of the packing right down to the production run. The data can be accessed through the barcode, and wherever it is, such as in a coolstore or an export container, a box can be located.

While that system can track the fruit, the industry has also been working hard to satisfy consumers' demand for safe fruit. The industry's Apple Futures programme is about producing fruit with no detectable chemical residue. This year, the programme did more than 500 residue tests over 100 production sites in Hawke's Bay, Nelson and Otago and all the results showed the chemical residues were so low they were at the lowest limits of detection.

Pipfruit NZ chief executive Peter Beaven said if it had a residue test on a line of fruit that met a customer's requirements, the fruit could be traced through the label system and supplied to that customer.

Wool

Wool Partners International, which wants to take New Zealand strong wool - used for interior textiles - from the farm gate to the export market, will launch a new traceability brand within the next two months. Chief executive Iain Abercrombie says it will be able to tell the story from woolshed to the end product and, importantly, it will be audited.

He says consumers in its key export markets in North America and Europe are sophisticated. "They can't be fooled by green washing. It is not good enough to say `This is lovely New Zealand wool'. We have to prove it and we have to have an audited process.

"We have an obligation to protect the intellectual property of not only the New Zealand strong wool industry but also our brand, Wools of New Zealand. Therefore, fibre integrity is important.

"Consumers want to know not only where this wool comes from, but that it comes from a farm that adheres to the best farming practices in the world, where animal welfare is important and where the land is not covered in pesticides or the sheep covered in insecticides," he says.

Elders Primary Wool, which has a partnership with United States carpet giant CCA Global Partners, is also pursuing traceability and is buying the rights for new technology to trace the source of wool in carpet through an imbedded thread.

Livestock

The controversial animal identification system NAIT (National Animal Identification and Tracing System) is planned to be in operation next year, but many farmers oppose it.

It is designed to keep track of where farmed animals are and where they have been. This is primarily to improve tracing of stock for biosecurity purposes but its promoters also say domestic and overseas customers are increasingly demanding that products can be traced from birth to slaughter.

They say the system will help continue or increase trade opportunities here and overseas. As an example, it says Australia's National Livestock Identification System is the focus of a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign to promote McDonald's in Japan, showing the system from a tagged cattle beast on a breeding property through to the burger restaurant in Japan.

Here, NAIT is supposed to be mandatory for cattle and deer by mid-2011, with other livestock sectors to follow. Only preliminary discussions have been held with the pig industry, with the focus on getting the system up and running first with cattle and deer.

It is being developed between the Government and industry. Fonterra supports it, saying it would strengthen the credentials of New Zealand's dairy exports.

However, a survey of Federated Farmers members shows 82 per cent oppose NAIT in its proposed form. Farmers aren't convinced of its merits, are worried about its cost, and prefer to focus on current systems.

Federated Farmers has called on NAIT to undertake a new cost-benefit analysis. NAIT will put its stage two business case to Cabinet at the end of next month and hopes for a decision three months later.

Milk

Fonterra knows the importance of traceability after the milk powder tragedy in China, in which six babies died and more than 200,000 became ill after drinking infant formula containing melamine. Melamine was first traced in products from SanLu, the dairy company in which Fonterra had 43 per cent ownership, and eventually 22 Chinese dairy companies were found to be selling products containing melamine. Ironically, the Fonterra farm in China was meant to be a best-practice farm.

Here in New Zealand, Fonterra has a system for tracing from the farm to the manufacturing plant. It uses a radio frequency identification tag on every vat Fonterra collects milk from. When the milk tanker driver connects the tanker hose, the computer on his truck acknowledges the vat and confirms it is at the correct location and collection can begin. The milk sample taken during collection also contains the collection information, such as the supply number, date and time. The milk is independently tested and the results can then be matched back to the collection information using the supply number, date and time of collection. Fonterra's international milk quality manager, Roger Andela, says data on a pack of butter or a carton of milk can be used to trace back to the manufacturing plant, the day of production and the group of farms where the milk came from.

Food labelling

It is often difficult to trace where food comes from because country-of-origin labelling for food is voluntary in New Zealand.

Food sold here, whether produced locally or imported, is not required to show where it or its ingredients originated. All that is required is that packaged food must have contact details for distributors or manufacturers in New Zealand so that consumers can ask for more information.

Since the intensive pig farming controversy, calls have been renewed for mandatory country of origin labelling (MccoOL).

The New Zealand Food Safety Authority says the main reason MccoOL hasn't been adopted is that the costs to consumers, industry and government far outweigh the benefits.

Green Party animal welfare spokeswoman Sue Kedgley's Consumer's Right to Know Bill, containing clauses that would have required accurate labelling of all meat production processes, failed in 2006.

Last week, she called on Prime Minister John Key to require the clear labelling of pork products, and said if that did not happen, she would work to get that part of her bill back before Parliament.

• Have you got a view on traceability or food labelling? Email laurab@nelsonmail.co.nz.

- © Fairfax NZ News