Food sickness costs a ‘gross exaggeration’
Food sickness costs a ‘gross exaggeration’Food sickness costs being used to justify the controversial Food Bill are a ‘gross exaggeration’ according to the think tank the New Zealand Centre for Political Research.Research undertaken into the Food Bill by Centre founder Dr Muriel Newman has raised concerns about the $162 million cost of foodborne illness identified in a government report and being used to justify the proposed legislation.
“The
$162 million figure is a gross exaggeration of what most
people understand to be the real ‘cost’ of illness”,
she said. “A breakdown of the figures in the report,
Estimating the Economic Cost of Foodborne Illness in
NZ, prepared for the New Zealand Food Safety Authority,
reveals that only $6 million is the direct cost of health
care. The rest is made up of the almost $17 million cost to
the government of setting and enforcing food hygiene
standards, $12 million in business compliance costs, and a
$27 million estimate of workforce losses caused when people
are ill. The lion’s share of the cost - $100 million –
is essentially a guestimate of the value private individuals
place on not getting sick.“As it
stands, the Food Bill is designed to introduce a new
regulatory regime for food producers and suppliers. By
requiring businesses to tailor their food safety procedures
to the level of risk they manage, the intention is to reduce
the incidence of foodborne disease and better align New
Zealand’s food safety requirements with those of our
trading partners.
Writing on the Centre’s NZCPR.com website the former MP says that given the government’s commitment to encouraging wealth creation and reducing compliance costs on small business, there may be better ways of dealing with New Zealand’s food poisoning problem than a total re-regulation of the whole food industry. “Don’t forget that it was the Labour Government that first started work on this Bill in 2003. Times have changed and maybe costly new regulation is not the way to deal with this problem”, she said.
For more
information:
NZCPR Weekly: “Does Our Food Industry Need New
Regulation?”