Robert Oakeshott (Lyne, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

In presenting this Imported Food Control Amendment (Bovine Meat) Bill 2010, I acknowledge the two-year moratorium that has been put in place by the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and the executive. I appreciate the work that has been done by government to reverse a decision that is somewhat strange and has been poorly received by communities such as mine. This is not about the technicalities of an import risk assessment and what we are hopefully going to see over the next two years. Rather this is about the related issues presented throughout the last month by consumers and many within the meat industry who quite rightly believe there are outstanding issues concerning both food labelling and tracing systems and that in a couple of years, if an import risk assessment comes in saying there are no problems, then these steps can and should improve the use and the sale of meat within Australia.

The first is a food labelling standard. The new food labelling standard would require the packaging of any imported bovine products to clearly display to the consumer the country of origin of the meat and the last recorded case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, BSE, in that country. From a consumer perspective that is something that is wanted and should be met by the market. I do not think it is asking too much to have that labelled on any product. The second is a tracing system. Australia can be proud of our livestock tracing system, the National Livestock Identification System. It is a world leader. If there is any problem whatsoever in our product, we can go back to the paddock and find out exactly what has happened.

I do not think it is too much for the industry and beef producers generally to be asking for a similar traceability system for any meat imported into this country. I understand the issues from peak industry bodies are that there may be other private members’ bills asking for full traceability systems in countries of origin. That is not what this bill is asking for. It is only asking for traceability on meat that hits our shores. I think peak industry bodies would support that. It is asking for a standard that is fair for all meat, both domestic and imported. I ask the government to consider these two points as part of the related topic of imported meat from BSE affected countries that has been raised over the last four to six weeks. These are two important steps that I think will bring community much further along if an import risk assessment comes into effect in two years and says that BSE affected countries are okay.

On a related issue, we would not even be here debating this if there were still a zero-risk rating within world trade in relation to bovine meat. It troubles me greatly that those that have been around this place for a while keep saying that my predecessor signed a side letter as part of the US FTA to sign away zero risk as a category for meat in world trade. If we are going to give up our huge competitive advantage of being an island nation and being disease free, we are signing ourselves up to the huge disadvantage of extra transport costs in our trading relationships. We are nuts if we do it, I think we are nuts for having done it, and I would hope these two small amendments place us in a much stronger position into the future. I would certainly ask government to consider it and hopefully adopt it.

Bill read a first time.

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