Craig Foss
National Party Horticulture Spokesman

30 May 2007

UK paper says ‘don’t buy NZ’

National Party Horticulture spokesman Craig Foss says the latest campaign in the UK against New Zealand produce is a very serious threat to our exports.

“The risk to our economy of such anti-New Zealand trade campaigns is massive. We have made so much progress beating ‘hard’ trade barriers and now the emerging threat of ‘soft’ trade barriers is before us.”

Mr Foss is commenting after learning that London newspaper ‘The Times’ has been running a monthly ‘Low Carbon Diet Masterplan’ series. This instructs consumers to ‘Buy a bottle of French wine instead of a New Zealand vintage’.

“The Food Miles campaign shows that New Zealand must make sure it has its own environmental act together: We must have a credible climate change policy. Only then will we be able to convince overseas consumers that buying New Zealand produce is on the whole good for them and the environment.

“The current Government’s record on greenhouse gas emissions undermines New Zealand’s credibility as we attempt to counter the Food Miles campaign.”

ENDS

Links to articles: (Towards bottom of page)

http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/pdfs/dietmasterplan.pdf