Update from Vincent Arbuckle, DDG, NZFS

Kia ora koutou,

Welcome to the November 2025 edition of Food News.

This month has been a busy one for the team at New Zealand Food Safety (NZFS). Throughout November, I travelled to Hamilton and Hawke's Bay as part of my routine stakeholder engagements and visited the teams at the School Lunch Collective, Hōhepa Farm and Foodeast Haumako.

These visits serve as valuable opportunities to connect with food businesses and to better understand how our work impacts the different and diverse areas of the industry. From novel food businesses looking to scale up, to established large scale operations, I appreciate how they all strive to the common goal of creating safe and suitable food.

As always, my sincere thanks to the verifiers. Your work spans every corner of the food system and is hugely important to the success of any food business. Your contributions are paramount to upholding public health and are appreciated by New Zealanders every day.

Ngā mihi nui,

Vincent Arbuckle
Deputy Director-General, New Zealand Food Safety

Food Act Improvements Programme Underway

After nearly a decade, the Minister for Food Safety recently announced a broad programme of work to strengthen the implementation of the Food Act. This programme responds to feedback from industry stakeholders and the Minister. It aims to strengthen the regulatory system while reducing unnecessary burdens on food businesses.

The programme recognises that meaningful change must be made to improve outcomes for food businesses with food safety front of mind. Four key areas have been prioritised for improvement:

• Standards and Schedules – improving clarity, consistency, and usability of food standards and the measures that apply to food businesses.
• Ease of Business – streamlining registration and reducing costs and administrative load. Improving tools and resources.
• Regulatory Oversight – enhancing consistency and quality of verification practices and reporting.
• Education, Tools and Engagement – boosting capability and knowledge sharing across the sector.

The work streams within this programme will guide targeted improvements to ensure the Food Act continues to support safe food and thriving food businesses across New Zealand.

Get Involved in the Food Act Improvement Programme

We’re committed to continuously improving the systems and processes that support New Zealand’s food safety framework under the Food Act 2014. As part of this work, we sometimes establish working groups to help shape improvements in specific areas.

If you’re interested in being involved or assisting with any of these initiatives, we’d love to hear from you. While we won’t have working groups for every area of the programme, this is an opportunity for businesses and stakeholders to contribute where relevant.

Please let us know by emailing foodactinfo@mpi.govt.nz

Prosecution for incorrect storage labelling in Australia

You may be interested to hear that the New South Wales court has fined an Australian food manufacturer AUD$200k, who had inadvertently mis-labelled almond milk and oat milk products with incorrect refrigeration instructions, which lead to a case of botulism. These recalled products have not been imported into New Zealand and NZFS has not received any notifications of associated illness

Between October 2022 and January 2023, the Australian manufacturer incorrectly labelled the perishable almond milk and oat milk products with ‘refrigerate after opening’ instead of ‘keep refrigerated at all times.’ The manufacturer also did not pick up on this error during their proof-reading of the labels before print. The judge considered the mitigating steps the company had taken including recalling the products and retraining staff, but still imposed a penalty.

As a reminder to New Zealand food businesses, under Standard 1.2.6 of the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code, food businesses must label their products with specific storage conditions and/or directions of use if these are required to maintain the shelf-life of the food or the safety of the food. NZFS examines overseas food safety incidents and risks in its fortnightly Food safety insights, emerging risks, and current issues bulletin, and shares lessons from these regularly with food businesses.

Complete steps 1-3 of the Continuing Professional Development programme by 30 November

Verifiers must select their points target and complete/upload their self-assessment and learning plan by 30 November. These steps will be recorded as incomplete for the year if not completed by this date. For information about extended leave and extensions please see the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Guide.

Continuing Professional Development drop-in Q&A sessions completed

The Shared Services team hosted six online drop-in sessions during October and November for verifiers and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) managers to ask questions about the CPD programme and the Food Safety Academy. A combined total of 185 people attended, showing continued interest in accessing support in this format. Questions and answers are available on the Academy Event Resources page.

Verifiers and CPD managers can email the Shared Services team for CPD support anytime at foodacttraining@mpi.govt.nz.

Allergy Awareness campaign

New Zealand Food Safety (NZFS) is encouraging safer dining experiences for people with food allergies through an awareness and subscription drive from November 7 to December 15.

At its heart, this drive is about making hospitality more inclusive. For many New Zealanders, ordering food can be a source of anxiety due to unknowns. A simple question like “Does this contain peanuts?” can be the difference between a great night out and a medical emergency.

To normalise conversations around allergens we have two key messages to facilitate awareness:

• Just Ask – encouraging diners to speak up and ask about allergens
• Sign Up – prompting people, including hospitality staff, to subscribe to allergen recall alerts so they’re informed

Please share the message with those you engage with. You can view the campaign landing page on the MPI website and be sure to sign up for allergen recall alerts so you can keep your customers safe: Food recall information for consumers | NZ Government.

Thanks for helping us make dining out safer for everyone.

Allergen Collaboration

NZFS is a member of the Allergen Collaboration, a group of government, industry and consumer representatives from New Zealand and Australia working together to raise awareness of food allergen-related issues in the community.

You can find a full list of Collaboration members here.

The Allergen Collaboration met on 17 November and endorsed the following focus areas for the next two years. They are:

• vegetarian and vegan claims;

• allergen risk assessment capability;

• allergen declarations on imported foods; and

• online food sales.

NZFS is working to identify work areas to support and enhance allergen awareness across the regulatory framework.

If you are looking for allergen information, refer to NZFS’s Food Allergens and intolerances webpage and the links to other sites at the bottom of the page.

There are also some great resources available on Collaboration member websites. For example, Australia’s National Allergen Council’s website Food Allergy Aware is a resource hub with information and practical resources (including short training videos) that are applicable in both Australia and New Zealand. The Food Allergen Portal is also the work of the Allergen Collaboration, and provides evidence-based information about best practice allergen management.

Important URL update for public registers from 22 February 2026

From 22 February 2026, the automatic redirect function for some public register old URLs will be turned off. This means that any bookmarks, saved links, or documents using the old URLs will no longer work after this date.

To ensure uninterrupted access, please review and ensure you update your links to the new URLs as soon as possible for the indicated sites below.

For any queries, please contact info@mpi.govt.nz.

Close out dates for MPI Approvals applications

Close out dates for Animal Product Act, Wine Act, and Food Act: Complete applications received by 12 noon Friday 14 November 2025 will be processed before Christmas. Later applications may not be approved until the New Year.

Close out dates for ACVM Act: Complete applications must be submitted by 12pm, Monday 1st December 2025. Later applications may not be processed until the New Year

NZFS availability over the holiday period

For the Christmas/New Year period, most of the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) sites will be closed from 12 noon 24 December 2025 and will open again on 5 January 2026.

Most inboxes will not be monitored during this time, except for those that manage urgent food safety issues. 

For urgent food safety issues, such as recalls, over the Christmas and holiday period: freephone 0800 00 83 33 and ask to speak with the on-call Food Compliance Officer. 

For any other urgent issues between 24 December and 5 January: please email info@mpi.govt.nz or phone 0800 008 333, which will be monitored during this period.