The PIANZ perspective

  • Vanessa Wintle

Executive Officer - Technical

Poultry Industry Association of New Zealand

The Poultry Industry Association of New Zealand, together with the Egg Producer's Federation of New Zealand, have been involved with the Foodsafe Partnership since its conception in 1998. This involvement has provided industry and members with a valuable opportunity to keep updated with the latest developments in food safety issues in New Zealand. This relationship has also allowed industry to participate in general food safety education with consumers, as well as providing a platform to help promote food safety education specific to the poultry industry.

As a member of the Foodsafe Partnership, we have also enjoyed the communication benefits of being able to reach a wider national audience. We have also enjoyed the benefits of utilising established and effective communication channels to share information and messages with key stakeholders and consumers. This co-operative spirit of reciprocation has provided benefits to both the Foodsafe Partnership, other members and ourselves. This is demonstrated in our consumer involvement through our support of food safety education, which is a very important issue to our industry.

As well as communicating with known groups, the Foodsafe Partnership has also introduced us to additional groups and expanded current communication channels. A recent example of this is that we were recently contacted by MidCentral Health who were concerned that a retailer was not cooking rotisserie chickens thoroughly enough. We were able to provide MidCentral Health with official cooking guidelines, who contacted the retailer to further educate them on food safety specific to poultry. In this case, being a member of the Foodsafe Partnership provided us with an opportunity to not only protect the integrity of a producer's product, but also to ensure the safety of the New Zealand consumer and ongoing education with food service providers.

It is opportunities such as these, coupled with networking and scientific forums, that have provided both the Poultry Industry Association of New Zealand and the Egg Producer's Federation of New Zealand with a compelling and satisfying reason to be involved and support the Foodsafe Partnership, which now forms an integral part of our communications and education programme.

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