NZ hit by 'food miles' campaign

"Food miles" pose a risk to the nation's farming exports to affluent northern hemisphere consumers, says AgResearch's chief science strategist, Stephen Goldson.

New Zealand trade officials have said concerns from the environmental lobby over the distance food travels from paddock to plate could undermine efforts to portray the country's primary produce in those markets as environmentally sustainable.

"Some of our competitors are looking for non-tariff [trade] barriers," Goldson said. "They may complain that we are not being ecologically responsible because we're burning a lot of fuel getting our products to the marketplace, because we're remote."

A British dairy company last month launched an $18 million butter advertising campaign knocking Fonterra's Anchor butter with jibes about how far it had to travel to the consumer.

Dairy Crest mounted the food miles campaign to promote its butter brand, Country Life, as "home grown". It implied that Anchor butter was of poorer quality and did more harm to the environment because it travelled 17,700km to market.

Lobbyists in Britain have argued that by eating produce from countries such as New Zealand, consumers are effectively eating oil because of the energy spent transporting them.

And environmental campaigners in Europe have used the examples of New Zealand fruit and meat being carried thousands of kilometres to market to argue that locally produced foods are more environmentally sustainable.

Agriculture Minister Jim Anderton warned recently that the focus in Europe on the "food miles", and carbon emissions in shipping produce to consumers, was directly targeting shipments from New Zealand.

"We have to respond to these changing market conditions," he said. "If we don't act, overseas markets are increasingly likely to penalise New Zealand producers."

Goldson said the issue of how much fossil fuel was used to get food to European supermarkets was topical partly because Europe's hottest summer had coincided with the release of an influential environmental book.

Professor James Lovelock's latest book, The Revenge of Gaia, argues that the world has already passed the point of no return for climate change, and civilisation is now unlikely to survive.

Goldson said the book was "rather apocalyptic" but coincided with the northern hemisphere's hottest summer. "People in northwest Europe and the US have started to flip out about climate change," he said.

That was a threat to New Zealand, well known as a producer of methane from its livestock. Methane makes up about 35 per cent of NZ greenhouse gas emissions, but only 20 per cent of the global problem.

- NZPA