Kia ora koutou and welcome to the July edition of MPI Organic News.

We hope everyone had an enjoyable and safe Matariki and were able to take the time to remember the past, celebrate the present and look to the future this Māori New Year.

Thank you for all your submissions on the National Organic Standard Regulations. While the timeline is still tight, the team was grateful for the opportunity to have a second phase of consultation and share with you the progress on these proposals. We are carefully considering the feedback received as we progress the proposals through to Cabinet.

To find out next steps for the Standard and other implementation activities please read below.

The development of the National Organic Standard (NOS) is progressing well, thanks to dedication and support of many of you from the organics sector contributing through the consultation process. Both phases of consultation have now closed, and we are working our way through all your feedback.

Throughout consultation we received useful examples from the sector on how the NOS would work in practice. We plan to use these examples when creating guidance on how to apply the NOS.

As you’re aware the Act requires the NOS to be set across regulations and supplementary notices. For the next few months we will be focusing on drafting the technical detail to sit in supplementary notices ready for consultation later this year. In parallel the NOS regulation proposals will be making their way through the cabinet process. Cabinet will decide whether to agree to the proposals and request Parliamentary Counsel Office to commence drafting the regulations. We will keep you posted on how this is progressing.

Parliamentary Counsel Office are continuing to draft the process regulations for approving organic businesses and recognising third parties to carry out evaluation and verification.

The Organic Sector Advisory Council met virtually on the 22^nd June. The focus of the meeting was on progress with developing the National Organic Standard and a presentation by MPI’s cost recovery team on how cost recovery models are developed and the principles that underpin these.

An action taken during the council meeting is how to best share information from meetings with the rest of the sector.  We’ll keep you updated on progress with this.