- Hon Andrew Hoggard
The Government is moving to strengthen rules for feeding food waste to pigs to protect New Zealand from exotic animal diseases like foot and mouth disease (FMD), says Biosecurity Minister Andrew Hoggard.
'Feeding untreated meat waste, often known as "swill", to pigs could introduce serious animal diseases like FMD and African swine fever, costing billions of dollars to New Zealand's economy and causing massive disruption to farmers and rural businesses.
Consultation opened today on new ideas for simplifying and strengthening our protections and I encourage people to have a say'.
The Biosecurity (Meat and Food Waste for Pigs) Regulations 2005 were introduced to control the feeding of waste food to pigs following an outbreak of FMD in the United Kingdom. It is widely believed that the 2001 UK outbreak was caused by pigs being fed untreated meat products contaminated with the disease.
The regulations require anyone who feeds food waste to pigs to treat meat-containing food waste by heating it to 100°C for one hour to kill any disease-causing bacteria and viruses.
"We've heard that the regulations are confusing for people who need to follow them. It's also difficult for the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) to verify whether food waste has been treated properly, making it difficult to enforce the regulations.
Exotic animal diseases could have a severe impact for New Zealand. Modelling of an outbreak of FMD shows an incursion of the disease in New Zealand would have dramatic impacts, with an immediate halt to most exports of animal products and a potential and ongoing drop in export values of around $14.3 billion a year'.
A discussion document is seeking feedback on four options:
• keeping the status quo, requiring food waste containing meat, or that has had contact with meat, to be treated before being fed to pigs
• prohibiting feeding any food waste to pigs that contains meat, or that has had contact with meat
• requiring food waste producers to treat food waste before it can be distributed for feeding, removing the risk at source
• prohibiting feeding food waste of any kind to pigs.
"We want to know what New Zealanders think about the options - particularly those who own pigs, but also farmers and others who would be affected by an outbreak of disease.
We also want to understand the impacts, anticipated benefits and costs of the options on all parts of the sector, so we can make sure that the final regulations are evidence-based, practical and enforceable."
The consultation can be found here and will run until Sunday 27 April 2025.
