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Food focus

A new way of thinking

Executive Director Andrew McKenzie may be retiring from his NZFSA role, but he still has plenty of ideas about how international food safety concerns should be addressed be addressed

For Andrew McKenzie, Executive Director of NZFSA since its inception in 2002, red tape, rules, regulations and bureaucracy for its own sake have always been targets.

His natural tendency to question long-held processes and procedures has gained him a far-reaching reputation as a common-sense negotiator who prefers actions to words. When NZFSA was set up in July 2002 he announced at the time that his aim was to ensure it was the least bureaucratic of the bureaucracies.

Some five years on and Andrew is to step down in mid-2007 after a career spanning almost 37 years in government in a range of roles related to the food industry and biosecurity.

He led the establishment of NZFSA which combined the domestic food safety functions of the Ministry of Health with the role of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in primary production and export of food. The move resulted in a single, integrated agency with responsibility for all food-related legislation.

Veterinary career

Andrew began his career as a government veterinary inspector. Veterinary practice was not something he had specifically considered as a career. “I just couldn’t think of anything else I particularly wanted to do.”

As a student, he flatted with fellow would-be vets Tom Scott and Lockwood Smith. The three of them developed a penchant for enjoying life rather than studying and history reveals the routes chosen by his peers.

Realising that his student funds wouldn’t last the distance he applied for a bursary in return for signing up to become a veterinary inspector.

It was in this role that he came up against the kind of bureaucracy he has typically questioned throughout his career.

“I found the work difficult,” he recalls. “I couldn’t feel proud of what I was doing in the meat industry because much of it was nonsensical.

“We were meeting all the inspection requirements stipulated by the EU and US markets irrespective of whether they were justified under New Zealand conditions in terms of food safety. I made it my mission to prove that much of it wasn’t necessary: it was needlessly costly, involving a lot of unnecessary labour and testing.”

In 1985, with the support of the meat industry, he set up a trial in which more than 320,000 sheep heads were tested to prove to overseas regulators that head and tongue inspection did nothing for disease diagnosis for the remaining carcass meat.

Modernising processes

It was a gamble that paid off, eventually saving the government and the meat industry around $15 million a year.

“I got a real thrill out of that. It was the first of many trials we did to modernise our meat inspection processes in terms of international trade – and we’re still streamlining today.”

The trial marked the introduction of science-based meat inspection procedures and eventually led to the modification of the country’s meat inspections on that basis. The concept has expanded to include the whole food safety programme and beyond. “Nowadays we don’t consider just the science and the hazard, but we consider the degree of risk, too.”

Skilled negotiator

His skills as a negotiator and diplomat held him in good stead as he pushed for international recognition of New Zealand’s science-based approach to its meat hygiene programme at Codex and OIE committee meetings.

His steadfast refusal to accept what he considered to be the over-prescriptive requirements of overseas inspectors who regularly toured the country’s meat premises, and his determination to ensure they recognised the equivalence of New Zealand’s systems, paved the way for the EU Veterinary Agreement, New Zealand’s only equivalency agreement, which is in place today.

Throughout his career it has been his ability to identify and focus on a bigger picture that has enabled Andrew to cut a path through the kind of red tape that can put a stranglehold on international trade.

“I like to keep looking forward. I’ll have a picture in my head about how I think a system should work, what the ultimate outcome should be, and then it’s a matter of getting everybody to work towards it.

“Though I’m not a particularly good scientist I do approach issues and ideas from a scientific angle. I like to start the thing off, get the thinking to where it needs to be, then I let the younger guys come in and attend to the detail of implementation. I tend to lose interest in the detail.

“I prefer to gather the thinking together around issues or ideas and put it into a New Zealand context (sometimes an international one), then I set about convincing others.”

Strategic thinker

It was this kind of strategic thinking that led to NZFSA’s development of the domestic food review, the most extensive overhaul of New Zealand’s antiquated food laws for more than 30 years.

Its recent – unopposed – passage through Government has been a highlight of his career.

The review was based on an idea Andrew had been formulating long before NZFSA was established. What has evolved does not quite match his original thinking but, as he points out: “Ideas – and the thinking behind them – evolve; solutions identify themselves. If you try to force change for the sake of it, you’ll come unstuck.

“Once I had a clear picture in my head about how it could work, we began speaking with other government departments, with local authorities, with public health units… It’s a good feeling when you get an idea that you can bounce off other people, get their feedback, move the thing along.”

Into the future

Nowadays he gets his thrills from watching those around him at NZFSA enhance their own skills, develop their ideas and take the food safety programme forward. Not that he’s running low on ideas of his own.

“The idea of equivalence agreements, of the kind we enjoy with the EU, has now taken off, but countries are getting themselves tied up in knots trying to compare the detail of food regulatory programmes.

“I believe that rather than replicating each other’s systems we need to understand the risks facing different countries, trust them to manage those risks themselves and accept each other’s food safety programmes on that basis.

“When you think about it, we’re all working to the same food safety goals and public health outcomes and yet when we visit Australia, the United States or Canada we never stop to consider whether the food we eat there is safe. It simply isn’t an issue. We should be able to take advantage of that thinking by creating a different relationship with those countries.”

Under Andrew’s direction a think piece is now being put together to progress the idea.

His decision to step down was not, he says, an easy one and his announcement, particularly to NZFSA staff, was one of the most difficult he has had to make – an indication of his unassuming character – but he remains upbeat about NZFSA’s ability to continue as a world-leading regulatory authority.

“A lot of what we do is dependent not only on our science-based approach but on creating an organisation that works effectively. One of the advantages of being a small country is that we can be quick on our feet. We can troll the world for good ideas, put them into a New Zealand context and implement them while other countries are still thinking about them. I feel sorry for the big economies.”