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Source: ONE News -
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The government is trying to wriggle out of a transtasman deal making the adding of folic acid to bread compulsory.
Debate is raging across New Zealand over the benefits of the additive and now even the Prime Minister is taking notice.
John Key is seeking legal advice from top Crown lawyers as the government tries to get out of the transtasman deal making the controversial move compulsory.
It's due to become law in September.
There are few things so basic to life as our daily bread. So being forced under a treaty with Australia to add folic acid to such a staple food was always going to be controversial.
"The National government is not of the view that it's a really great idea to be doing this," says Key.
But until now, the National government claimed it had to add folic acid from September because it was bound by a transtasman food standards agreement.
"I am constrained by the laws and it doesn't set a good example if, just because we don't like a decision, then we decide to break the law," Kate Wilkinson, Food Safety Minister, told TVNZ's Q A programme on Sunday.
But now the Prime Minister is demanding top legal advice from Crown Law to see whether New Zealand can opt out.
"That's the level of advice that we are now getting to find out what are the consequences," says Key.
The Food and Grocery Council has welcomed the Prime Minister's intervention.
"We're very encouraged by the fact that the Prime Minister has chosen to intervene and start to knock some officials' heads together. Politics is after all the art of the possible," says Katherine Rich of the Food and Grocery Council.
And opting out looks entirely possible. Apparently not even Australia is worried.
Key was asked who would prosecute if New Zealand did pull out of the folic acid agreement.
"Well that's the point. I can't tell you today exactly what the consequences are. I imagine there would be technically some but I think you're right, it is unlikely that the Australians would take a case against New Zealand," says Key.
As far as the health case against folic acid, that seems to be waning.
Professor of Human Nutrition at Otago University, Murray Skeaff, says researchers from Oxford University reported they found no evidence that folic acid changed the risk of cancer.
The political risk though is quite another matter.
Key says it is his intention to resolve the matter before the standard comes in in September.
