Unscramble the egg mess

The Tasmanian Greens today urged everyone who cares about local produce to make a submission about the proposed regulations for egg producers in Tasmania.

Greens Primary Industries spokesperson Kim Booth MP today said that from the outset the Greens had advocated to ensure that small egg producers could continue unhindered by excessive fees and regulations.

“Small egg producers often have mixed farms that provide for a diversity of produce. Their innovative approach is helping to drive Tasmania’s burgeoning local food culture, which underpins our clean, green and creative brand,” Mr Booth said.

“The Minister must listen to small egg producers and ensure that he doesn’t create such a headache of regulations as to make it all just too hard and expensive.”

“According to one producer who has made a submission, the fees alone that they would have to pay under the new regulations would add at least $3.70 to the cost of a dozen eggs.”

“Information that I obtained under Right to Information also demonstrates that the proposed stamping of each individual egg for traceability of potential salmonella cases does not stop or reduce salmonella from occurring.”

“In 2011, the Minister said that his department would work to ensure that small egg producers were not cut out of the local market, and the Greens are now calling on him now to keep his commitment.”

”This type of small scale, family farm egg production not only supports local markets, households and community groups but can be a better ethical choice for the consumer,” Mr Booth said.

TRANSCRIPT EXCERT FROM PRIMARY PRODUCE SAFETY BILL 2011 (No. 46)
Tuesday 20 September 2011
Mr BOOTH – So finally for clarification, what happens when the new regulatory model is developed with regard to these regulations and the public advertising and so forth? I am not sure whether there is an advocacy group. There would be industry groups of course that would lobby and potentially an industry group, for example egg producers, might prefer there to be no chooks available in people’s backyards who are selling a few eggs, but they have a powerful voice and they have a paid lobbyist probably and so forth, whereas the family producer generally does not have an interest in getting involved in a regulatory regime. Could you commit to the House that the current regulations will form the basis of the debate around those regulations and that there will be someone to advocate at least for or from your department or in some way to make sure some sort of industry lobby is not able to torpedo the rights of a family producer simply because of the fact that they are engaged in the process and the no-show from the public with regard to the development of regulations will not be taken to indicate that the public are happy to see a prohibition on the growing and sale of very small scales of vegetables and eggs and so forth?
Mr GREEN – It needs to be kept in perspective. Effectively we are lining up as best we can with the national regime, FSANZ, which will require us to do certain things. There is also the element that the member is talking about where, for example, under the Meat Hygiene Act you are allowed to slaughter an animal and use it for yourself or your visitors on your farm. It is unlikely that you would be able to sell that meat and we would not be looking to regulate in that regard. When it comes to chooks, with regulation sometimes you have to jump through the Treasury hoops with respect to numbers of chooks. There are lots of checks and balances with what we are trying to achieve here. I guess to broaden the consultation beyond what we have to do to allow us to comply with this would be quite onerous, except to say that we do have rules and regulations and standards in place now that we can effectively refer to for the future as part of this process.
Mr BOOTH – Effectively, then, you are making a commitment that the current regime will be transferred across to the new regime and there will be an advocacy at least from your department.
Mr GREEN – Yes. If we wanted to change it to 100 chooks Treasury might have something to say about that because there is a revenue aspect and a whole range of things that come into play. I do not expect we would be changing too much in that regard except what we are trying to do here is achieve standards that allow us to market product and do all those other things on a domestic, national and international basis.
Kim Booth MP Greens Primary Industries Spokesperson