HSNO Act Changes Unlikely to Pass Before November Election

The Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Amendment Bill, also known as the HSNO Act, has fallen victim to a huge raft of other legislation that the Government wants passed ahead of the bill in the current parliamentary term.

The amendments to the HSNO Act are seen as a major priority by the primary sector, frustrated by red tape, long timeframes, complexity of the process, costs and overall uncertainty about when products are finally approved by the regulator, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The changes to the bill came out of a review by the new Ministry of Regulation which made sixteen recommendations to streamline the approval process. It's been before the Primary Production Select committee that has been hearing submissions on it.

One of the proposals in the amended bill would allow for a product that has been approved by a credible overseas regulator to be used in NZ until it gets final approval from the EPA.

The Minister for the Environment, Nicola Grigg, told Rural News that the Government has reached out to end users in the primary sector and is aware of their frustration about the present act and the blockages that it is causing. She says the new EPA board and chief executive are much more commercially driven and connected with farmers and growers.

Grigg says the intent of the changes is to give NZ farmers and growers easier access to products that are available overseas to control pests and invasive species, and for crop protection.

"We still must be risk averse in the sense that you can't unleash any old thing out into the environment. We must be acutely aware of our markets and end users and our own environmental limitations. But also, we also must be at the vanguard of innovation and being able to try and test and keep on innovating," she says.

The progress of the HSNO Bill was front and center of topics discussed at the recent Animal and Plant Health (APHANZ) conference in Wellington. Here, representatives from MPI, the EPA and the former MFE gave presentations and answered questions about the HSNO Bill as well as changes to the RMA and ACVM bills; the latter two are likely to be passed by Parliament this year.

The CEO of APHANZ, Dr Liz Shackleton, says a big concern for her members was the timeframes within the HSNO Act.

She says when you are in business, time is money and uncertainty costs.

She says while they would like to get the HSNO Bill through Parliament, she recognises the huge legislative backlog.

Shackleton says her members want to see new and novel products get approved faster.