Andrew Hoggard: Food Safety Minister on the infant formula label changes

New Zealand's opposing proposals for infant formula label changes while Australia is adopting them.  

Dairy industry groups raised concern it could impact exports of the product.  

Ministers from both countries met to discuss the proposal written by the collective Food Standards Authority. 

Food Safety Minister Andrew Hoggard sought a review but failed.  

He told Mike Hosking he didn't expect he'd be successful. 

Hoggard said that asking for a review is unusual, and is hardly ever agreed to, but he decided to fight the good fight anyway. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Update for you on the infant formula labeling. Earlier this
week we told you about the growing concern over the
labeling and potential changes to be made from the food
standards people manufacturers threatening to walk away. Jobs are on
the line, not to mention our role in the multi
billion dollar infant formula market and places like China. Anyway,
the Food Minister Andrew Hoggard, he was in Australia at
the meeting and he's with us.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Morning to you, Good morning, Mike.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Are you still in Australia.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Yes, I'm still in Australia. Just find back this morning.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Out of ten, it couldn't have gone better one. It
was a complete bust. What we to score.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Probably three or four of But then I was kind
of expecting that wouldn't be successful because we're asking for
a review is very very unusual and doesn't often happen
and hardly ever agreed to. So that was kind of
going in there. It was going to be a fight
of complete that. I'll fight the good fight anyway.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Good on you. So the people you're in the room with,
are they the food ministers of the states or the
federal ministers? Who was there?

Speaker 2 (00:57):
So Commonwealth minister and it's coming off health minister. And
then all the state or there weren't that many. There
was a number of proxies, so there's about half the
state and territory ministers weren't there. But they either send
a health minister an agriculture minister, and most of them
were health ministers I believe.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
Okay, are they all on the same page universally or not?

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Well, they were all on the same page in terms
of not asking for a review. So they went on
my page. They were on their page, but.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
They were on their page. But they so it was
Australia versus New Zealand and you were the New Zealand representative.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
Pretty much.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Yes, these food people and just to give us a background,
I didn't realize, I mean I knew of them. I
didn't realize they had carte blanche. What they say goes
is that right or not so?

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Well? Pretty much they get a direction from the ministers
around we would like to review this. These are the
things that we are concerned about. This is what we
want you to look into and develop a steam ended
whatever it may be with this in mind. And then
it's sort of an independent body that goes off and
developed so for this infant formula. This all started back

(02:10):
in twenty thirteen, and they've worked on it, they report back.
They may get some changes in direction over time from
the ministers, but basically once it gets to this point,
it's kind of nearly done and dusted once they give
their final board report back.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
Have they been captured by the breastfeeding crowd?

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Look, I don't believe. I don't know. I wouldn't obviously
don't have the opportunity to get into the meetings. But basically,
I mean they're going along with sort of what's happening
who level in terms of trying not to do any advertising,
and I think there's a fair bit of confusion around

(02:56):
what was being asked for or what was industry would
currently like to do and what people believed industry were
wanting to put on it.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
So it's not it's not playing packaging like cigarettes, it's
it's it's it's it's not what they had it somewhere
in between is that it Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Pretty much, it's it's not playing packaging, but it's taking
off you know, this contains X, Y and Z and
just having all of that stuff on the back and
whereas industry feel that in particularly in the Chinese market,
which we were the economic concerned. We were worried about
was customers there like to see that there's certain ingredients

(03:33):
in their tins of infant formula, so they're quite well
read up on needs to have this ingredient and that ingredient,
and European producers were able to put that on the front,
whereas under the standard we won't be able to and do.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
None of them in the room, except that that puts
us at a competitive disadvantage and we might not want
to be in that position in a.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
Market in China. I mean, the advice that came back
from the Food Safety body was that they believed it
wouldn't have an economic impact, Whereas you know, I was
sort of I didn't feel the economic analysis was strong
enough to be able to prove that one way or another,
and quite frankly, that's why I was team for the review,

(04:21):
just to be able to test this, get some more
analysis done on this, and certainly put some of our
officials to work in terms of trying to work through
all the claims either way. But with a short amount
of time available, I wasn't willing to take the risk
that it may m error exactly or not. No, there's

(04:42):
no peal of What happens now is we have until
the fifth of August to write an official letter saying
that we opt out of the standard, so the old
standard would apply to us.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
So you're going to do that and that's done, so
it works out okay for us in the end.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
Well, there's a lot of good stuff with the new
standard because this part that was pretty poor. So we
need to work through industry with industry and do a
bit more work on Okay, are we really making the
right call here? So the intention would be, yeah, that
we go ahead and opt out and then look at

(05:18):
how we could actually create our own standard.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
Potentially, that's where we could have a standard by we
put a product on the shelf and sell it because
it's really good, and we make some money and dig
ourselves out of this massive economic hole. Would how about
that as an idea?

Speaker 2 (05:32):
Yeah, that's a pretty good idea. Actually, Yeah, everyone wants
to stop making money and keep spending it. Yeah, kind
of keen on making some money.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
Actually, funny that day, how are you and adelaide still?
Is it five o'clock in the morning there? Yes, it
is okay, cool, well, I appreciate you getting up early
for us. No worries at all. It's all right, no worries.
Go well mate, Andrew Hoggart. Hope you all blacks are
listening to that. He not hard to get up at
five o'clock in the morning. Is it not that hard?
Hard to talk on the day and give us a

(06:02):
backup forward on a Tuesday to be pre recorded five
days before the game. Andrew can get up at five
o'clock in the morning, No worries at all. God bless them.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
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