New Zealand Parliament has recently discussed a petition filed by the Safe Food Campaign (SFC) seeking implementation of a zero tolerance policy on pesticide residues in baby food. In spite of the fact that according to recent testing results, New Zealand’s infant formula products contain higher pesticide concentrations compared with its European counterparts; the NZ government has taken no affirmative action to counteract this disparity in quality.
NZ government has now been petitioned to take steps to ameliorate the quality and pesticide residues levels in baby foods in what could foreseeably mirror the EU’s mandatory policy requiring that processed infant and young children’s food contain no more than 0.01ppm (mg/kg) of pesticide. The government has also been prompted to adopt a more extensive surveillance system for baby foods.
The latest official sampling inspection took place in 2009 and showed that pesticide residues were detected in 30% of the NZ baby food samples, far more than the level in EU.
Changes in market share and consumer purchasing preference might well reflect consumers’ confidence in the country’s products. In the first four months of 2015, the amount of imported NZ infant formula has declined by 16.2%, now accounting for just a 9% share of the whole Chinese market, while the market shares of Dutch and Irish products have increased drastically.
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