Kia ora koutou and welcome to the final edition of MPI Organic News for 2022 – the December edition!

It’s been fantastic to see the momentum continue since we published the last Organic News. There’s been excellent sector involvement in virtual Technical Working Groups and Regulation Development sessions. Progress has also happening in Parliament with the Organic Products and Production Bill passing its Second Reading stage on 27 October and is now awaiting the Committee of Whole House stage. Woo!

This is the last edition of Organic News this year, the MPI team want to wish you a very safe and happy Christmas and a relaxing start to 2023. We look forward to seeing you all in the New Year! Ngā mihi o te wā (Seasons Greetings).

Please consider sharing this with your organic sector colleagues and friends, click the 'forward' button at the very end of the newsletter or click here.

Read below to find out more information on what’s happening across the other areas of work.

Thanks to those of you who have joined us for the virtual workshops and review sessions to develop the National Organic Standard. It’s been great to see some new faces and the continued support from those that joined us at the face-to-face workshops. Technology with these sessions has not always been our friend and we acknowledge that occasionally the Zoom links aren’t working for external participants. Please keep sending through your feedback if you encounter issues and we will continue to investigate solutions.

Some of the feedback we have been getting from the virtual sessions is that you would like to see how the topics relate to one another and be able to more easily reference if the content is covered somewhere else in the standard. We hear you! Once we have worked through the next couple of weeks of review sessions, our focus will be to pull those sections that span across the standard (e.g. Split & Parallel production) and present them to you as a whole. There will be follow-up sessions on these broader topics in the new year as well as some new workshops on record keeping and Organic Management Plan (OMP) requirements.

The second meeting of the Organic Sector Advisory Council is to be held on 12 December. This meeting is to be held virtually, with a condensed format focussing on actions from the last meeting and the re-engagement on the regulations. For those of you who missed it in our last newsletter the membership of the council is as follows:

Apiculture New Zealand, AsureQuality Kaitiaki Kai, Aquaculture New Zealand, BioGro, Certified Organic Kiwifruit Growers Association, Demeter New Zealand, Dairy Products Safety Advisory Council, Kelmarna Gardens, Orakei Gardens, Organics Aotearoa New Zealand, New Zealand Organic Meats, Organic Dairy & Pastoral Group Of New Zealand, Organic Exporters of New Zealand, Organic Farms New Zealand, Organic Traders Association, Organic Winegrowers New Zealand, The Soil and Health Association of New Zealand, and Te Waka Kai Ora

Re-engagement with the organic sector on the proposed regulations is now well underway. At the end of October, a number of information sheets were published on the MPI website, detailing the proposed regulations. We have also held a series of online information sessions, to further talk through the proposals and allow a space for questions and answers.

We have had some great discussions so far and would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has read the information sheets or attended an information session. If you haven’t had the opportunity to have a look through the proposals yet then, don’t worry, there is still time for you to have your say.

Please email us with any written feedback on the proposals at OrganicsConsultation@mpi.govt.nz by 5pm on 9 December 2022. Due to the volume of feedback, we will not be able to respond to individual submissions, but your feedback will be read and considered by us moving forward.

How the new organics regime will be made into law

During our engagement, we heard that you would like more information on how different parts of the new organics regime will be made into law. For example, what the various regulations will cover and how the National Organic Standard will be made into law.

To answer this, we will be adding a new FAQ to our website in addition to giving a fuller explanation in the next organics newsletter – keep an eye out!

There have been lots of developments on the Bill since the last Organic News. The Second Reading of the Bill, in Parliament, was completed on 27 October 2022. With the completion of the Second Reading, the name of the Bill is now the Organic Products and Production Bill.

Prior to the Second Reading, Minister O’Connor tabled a supplementary order paper which is available, alongside other lodged supplementary order papers, on the New Zealand Legislation website. The paper proposes changes to the Bill to provide greater transparency and clarity to the organic sector and ultimately make the Act a stronger and more robust piece of legislation. You can learn about the supplementary order paper here.

On 25 November 2022, the Bill began the Committee of the Whole House stage. This stage allows parliament to further debate the contents of the Bill and the supplementary order paper. The House went into recess before the Committee of the whole House could be completed. This stage will be completed at a later date.

As always, you can keep an eye on the progress of the Bill, and watch replays of any speeches made during the various stages, on Parliament’s website.