Meme from Greenpeace NZ

Following the botulism in milk whey problem an editorial in the China Daily has blasted New Zealand for its lack of quality control, saying its 100% pure image is nothing but a festering sore, and that its  laissez-faire attitude had contributed to its rotten, leaky home problem. Those who’ve lived in New Zealand will recognise this as the “she’ll be right” attitude that seems to pervade so many of New Zealand’s attitudes to standards control.

Contrast the China Daily comments with the remarks made by  NZ’s Trade Minister Tim Grosser at the Argicultural fieldays in June. He described Argiculture as New Zealand’s Silicon Valley.

“…Our exports to China have tripled in the last five years. But literally, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet”. The middle class of these countries is about to explode. It will grow from around 500 million today to around 3 billion in the next 15 years.

This is not like some ripe plumb, ready to fall into our hands. It is simply an opportunity. To grasp it, we need to continue to ensure, for example, we have the right tax policies, 21st Century infrastructure suitable for a small but successful outward-looking economy, the right regulatory frameworks in place governing water, food safety and myriad other issues…”

‘Agriculture: NZ’s Silicon Valley’ – it absolutely nails the point that agriculture will be as important to our future as it has been to our past. And this is strongly related to the rise of the emerging
economies. These emerging economies look to New Zealand primarily for safe, high quality food and agriculture technology. We have it, and they want it…”

But unfortunately, the rest of the world doesn’t share New Zealand’s attitude to quality standards in food manufacture, not when the lives of its children are involved. They say the devil is in the detail, and that’s where New Zealand is falling short. Perhaps there should be less reliance on 100% pure campaigns to sell NZ product, and more energy given to getting things to the correct high standards every time?

Here’s the editorial from the China Daily. If you have experience of glib or laissez-faire attitudes in New Zealand standards please leave a comment on this post.

Does New Zealand pay nothing more than lip service to its quality standards?

Should the 100% pure campaign be taken with a pinch of salt, or has the time come to be honest, admit its a load of bunkum and abandon it?

Commentary: New Zealand needs to start building trust in the long-term (links are to articles on this blog)

“WELLINGTON, August 5 (Xinhua) — “A high quality free trade agreement”  the term has been a catchphrase of New Zealand ministers in recent administrations when they talk of overseas trade.

But with yet another trade imbroglio, this one Fonterra’s botulism scare, surely it’s time to ask the New Zealand government: “Where’s the quality control?”

Fonterra might have come away with some credit had it moved quickly to isolate the affected produce and implement a recall, but when such a problem takes more than a year to come to light, it’s elevated from an industry event to a national issue.

New Zealand Trade Minister Tim Groser has promised “a thorough investigation,” and surely one of the first questions must be why Fonterra apparently felt no legal onus to inform the public and the authorities sooner?

After another communications failure over chemical residues from the fertilizer dicyandiamide (DCD) in dairy products and the certification problems that saw New Zealand meat sitting on Chinese wharves earlier this year, Groser told Televison New Zealand in June: “The more you trade, the more likely it is that things will go wrong in terms of the detail.”

But New Zealand’s problems aren’t mere “details”  they’re starting to look systemic.

One could argue the country is hostage to a blinkered devotion to laissez-faire market ideology. Many New Zealanders fell victim to this when the construction industry was deregulated two decades ago resulting in damp and leaky homes that quickly became uninhabitable.

While it’s true the government isn’t responsible for the contamination of Fonterra produce, it should be held accountable for the fact that nothing was done to identify the problem before it was dispatched to export markets and domestic customers.

However, to blame the succession of trade fiascos solely on free-market naivety would be charitable.

New Zealand Federated Farmers President Bruce Wills came closest to identifying the underlying problems when he said Friday: “The need is for government departments, educators and exporters, as well as farmers, to understand our customers. We need to understand their systems and ways of doing things a lot better than we currently do.”

To start with, that means defining a “high quality” trade. Too often New Zealand’s government appears to lay siege to perceived trade barriers, battering bluntly away until the doors swing open. And once open, it’s open slather for those who can throw as much produce at the new market as possible.

Witness the infant formula industry. Possibly the authorities felt no obligation to register the industry’s exporters for so long because of the dearth of actual New Zealand-owned producers.

Reports in the Chinese media of products being rejected and some of the dubious labelling finally prompted the New Zealand government in June to set up a brand register.

That China also requested brand information be included on export certificates was no surprise either, as the New Zealand government, which makes a great show of disdaining regulation at home, seems quite happy to let others regulate for it abroad.

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key made that plain during his official visit to China in April, when he attempted to tackle a niggling controversy over foreigners buying New Zealand land and property.

It followed a heated public debate over Shanghai Pengxin’s long court battle to purchase 16 North Island dairy farms.

The constant push for exports and foreign investment stems, New Zealanders are told, from the country’s desperate need for inward capital, but rather than lay down standards and principles to build trust, the government appears to adopt the quality-free rationale of the foreign trade: sell in bulk while the window is open and move on to the next deal.

The country is set to become a major supplier of quality food to the growing Asian market, New Zealanders are told. In June, Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce said New Zealand could become a “fruit bowl for Asia.”

Those visions can only be built on trust and trust comes from regulatory systems that work, as China and Fonterra found with the Sanlu melamine scandal in 2008.

Glib assurances that the problems are “details” or that they are a sign that New Zealand is a “victim of its own success” in trade just don’t cut it.

The glibness is stalking other aspects of New Zealand’s foreign trade, with the country’s “100 Percent Pure” tourism campaign becoming a festering sore as experts claim that the country might not in fact be “100 percent pure.”

John Key, who also serves as tourism minister, defended the campaign in April: “It’s like saying ‘McDonald’s, I’m loving it’ – I’m not sure every moment that someone’s eating McDonald’s they’re loving it … it’s the same thing with 100 Percent Pure. It’s got to be taken with a bit of a pinch of salt.”

No, Mr Key, it needs to be fixed before your trading partners just stop “loving it.””