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Food Focus August 2008

Reaching out to the world

The reputation of NZFSA and the credibility of our export assurances, controls and certification are essential to much of New Zealand’s $18 billion food export industry. Our exports tend to get preferential treatment as a consequence

NZFSA’s market access team plays an integral part in New Zealand’s ability to export $18 billion worth of agricultural and seafood products annually. Every year some 200,000 export certificates are issued to our exporters.

More than 100 countries receive government-to-government assurances from NZFSA that the animal, dairy, plant and seafood products they receive from New Zealand’s producers comply with agreed standards. The behind-the-scenes work to make this happen is carried out by NZFSA’s market access team.

The team (when fully staffed) has nine New Zealand staff with representation in two embassies overseas, under the leadership of Director, Tony Zohrab. Six senior staff are each responsible for a region of the world and deal with all types of exports that require some form of government-to-government assurance.

Traditionally, the team has consisted of some of the most senior and experienced staff in NZFSA because of the economic importance of the role and the necessity for integral knowledge and experience of our domestic and export standards. Staff also need a good pragmatic understanding of the realities of the production and processing systems of food and food-related products within New Zealand. Currently veterinarians make up a large part of the team, but ex diplomats, arts graduates and food technologists are also in the mix.

Team members try to visit or host delegations from the major markets in each region at least once a year, but most of their work is carried out via computers and telephones. Accordingly the market access team is reliant on market intelligence being supplied from a variety of sources, especially that gleaned by exporters from their importers or reported back from New Zealand’s embassies around the world.

Reducing unnecessary costs

The team’s role is to ensure that unnecessary or scientifically unjustified official assurance (certification) requirements are not imposed on our exports by importing countries where different risk factors or alternative systems exist in New Zealand. Tony says that “putting up technical cases challenging the necessity of a particular importing country requirement or making submissions arguing for the equivalence of New Zealand’s existing systems are two of the most common ways this is advanced.”

Involvement of other NZFSA groups is usually pivotal in developing such submissions. Integral to such submissions is having credible and robust regulatory systems already in place within New Zealand, along with appropriate and sufficient data to be able to make a scientifically defendable case. However, ultimately, overseas regulators mandate the conditions our exporters must meet to export to their markets.

The Overseas Market Access Requirements (OMARs) issued by NZFSA reflect the importing country’s conditions, less any restrictions the market access team has been able to negotiate away. Something as small as having a major market apply a different heavy metal standard to exports of New Zealand ling, for example, or the acceptance of a statistically based residue testing programme as opposed to having to test a fixed percentage of animals can confer significant cost savings and greater market certainty to exporters.

Developing relationships

Working strategically and prioritising on the basis of the likely long-term return on investment for New Zealand Inc. is key to the work of the team. The team prefers to formally agree on a strategic approach and regional priorities with whole industry sectors and not only focus on where costs are imposed on exports but also on improving and developing relationships, thereby maximising future opportunities.

At the same time the team has to work reactively to some extent when markets come up with new laws for political, cultural or economic reasons, or where problems are detected at borders. In the current environment where even the less-developed economies are rapidly increasing their regulation and monitoring of imports, dealing with port of entry problems and even the maintenance of many of the existing terms of trade has become a challenge.

Negotiating electronic certification (E-cert) trials has been a significant area of activity, with Canada, Jordan, Singapore, the USA, Indonesia and the EU all initiating trials with New Zealand.

It can take years to negotiate some deals. A recent achievement was the conclusion of the Sanitary and Phytosanitary chapter of the China Free Trade Agreement. New Zealand already has Sanitary and Veterinary Treaties with the European Union and Russia, as well as cooperative arrangements with the USA, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Jordan, Turkey and many other countries.