New government rules coming for micro-abattoirs; homekill for sale in pipeline

Food Safety Minister Andrew Hoggard said micro-abattoirs told officials the testing rules were unnecessarily restrictive and costly. Photo / RNZ, Angus Dreaver

By Monique Steele of RNZ

The Government is looking to cut red tape for small meat processors and is also exploring how homekill meat could be made suitable for sale.

From next year, small-scale meat processors will be subject to reduced meat sampling and testing requirements – compared to their larger, export-focused counterparts.

Around six to 12 of New Zealand’s small operators who process between 200-2000 farmed animals each year will be affected by the new rules announced this week.

They currently have to test 60 carcasses for things like Salmonella or E. coli.

That will be reduced to 30 in the first season and 12 in subsequent seasons, from April next year.

Food Safety Minister Andrew Hoggard said micro-abattoirs told officials the testing rules were unnecessarily restrictive and costly.

“Not reducing the safety at all, but certainly reducing the costs quite massively for [operators], which has been a barrier for a number of them either getting started or trying new operations,” he said.

“By reducing it down to a much more proportionate number reduces a lot of costs, enables them to do a bit more, and hopefully we can see a few more micro-abattoirs emerging around the country and a few more better deals for consumers.”

It is illegal to sell homekill meat in New Zealand, despite the trade growing in popularity amid cost-of-living pressures.

Hoggard said the Government was also looking into enabling commercial homekill, which was made difficult by poison-free declarations.

“We’ve got challenges with poison declarations, etcetera, for being able to turn more hunting meat, hunted deer, especially venison, into sellable products. And we are working on that one as well,” he said.

There were some challenges regarding the science around withholding dates and poison residues.

“So hopefully we’ll be having solutions on the administrative side of that within the next few months, which should enable less time in front of the computer for those people engaged in that business.

“It’ll be a bit of a slower burn on how we deal with those restrictions around withhold times and withhold areas because we do need to do a bit of science around that one to prove safety before we allow that.”

The new meat testing rules for micro-abattoirs will come into force in April.

- RNZ