Call to action: Restaurant sector needs to be active to meet challenge of new legislation.

The Food Bill 2010 is potentially one of the biggest changes ever to the restaurant environment in New Zealand. It could alter the entire food safety regime for restaurants, as it puts the onus on the form of future regulations on the industry itself.

In its concentration on risk management, it is in line with recent recommendations from the US Institute of Medicine (IOM) to Congress calling for a change in food-safety priorities towards prevention of, rather than response to, outbreaks. This demands concentration on evaluating and managing risk, which the IOM considers to be a role of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), recommending that it employs risk management experts.

The New Zealand approach is to relay that risk management to operators, such as individual restaurants, under the umbrella of what the new bill terms a ‘food control plan’. The proposed legislation makes such plans available for multiple usage, so either restaurant chains, group operations or an industry representative organisation such as the Restaurant Association, can develop a template for a food control plan which will then be applied to all in that sector.

In its current form it is also possible for a regional authority to develop its own standard food control plan, which it can then apply arbitrarily to all restaurants under its administration. In effect, this means that a national standard adopted by an industry body such as the Restaurant Association can be ignored by a regional authority and another applied in that region’s territory.

This is not the greatest problem facing the restaurant community with this new legislation – laziness is. If the community does not take ownership of the regulations, they will be imposed from above with little respect for the realities of running a restaurant/cafe/catering business. Everybody needs to get active, and in the first instance go online and read (the most boring read of your life, I am sure) the details of the Food Bill 2010 as they apply to your business.

The next stage is to communicate with the Restaurant Association about anything in that document that concerns you, or, if not the Restaurant Association you could make submissions to the Parliamentary Select Committee which is making recommendations on possible changes to the legislation before it is passed.

In any consideration of these matters, take into account that the new attitude is risk, so that any regulation being imposed needs to consider reasonable risk to your customers and nothing else. If that risk cannot be quantified by science, it should not be included in any restrictions on service.

Theoretically, the act will require all operators under it to be proactive in reducing the risk of food-borne illness, and it is doing so by laying down a completely blank sheet for a rewrite of the regulations. Every restaurateur and chef out there is well aware of the stupidity of some existing food-safety regulations, so now is the chance to get rid of them and make your lives so much easier.

It is also a great opportunity to show the country how professional the hospo sector is.

• Go to www.grill.co.nz to find out how to make a submission, or contact the Restaurant Association of New Zealand on 09 638 8403.