Lower compliance costs sought for small cheesemakers | Hawkes Bay News | Local News in Hawkes Bay

Artisan cheesemaker Biddy Fraser-Davies went to Parliament today to give legislators a piece of her mind -- but first she had to soothe the feelings of Sally, one of her three cows.

``Sally was very displeased to be woken up at 5.30am -- we normally milk at the civilised hour of 8am,'' she told MPs in the primary production select committee.

The early milking was so that Mrs Fraser-Davies could travel from her Cwmglyn (CRRCT) Farm, south of Eketahuna, to ask MPs to exempt small cheesemakers with five or fewer animals from some of the compliance costs posed by the new Food Bill.

The hard cheeses she made were extremely safe -- ``bad'' bacteria have difficulty surviving the long maturation period -- and each cheese could be traced to a named cow: the ultimate in product traceability, she said.

``But there's such a huge bureaucracy involved,'' she said. ``The auditing has to be done every six months ... I despair.''

Her business -- run with husband Colin -- had functioned well for seven years with regular oversight by the local council's environmental health officer, but exposure on the Country Calendar TV programme meant bureaucrats had descended on her business like vultures.

``Suddenly the full wrath of the New Zealand Food Safety Authority fell upon us,'' she said.

``We didn't have a risk management plan for the farm and we didn't have a risk management plan for the cheese.''

A year later, she was still battling on.

Her farm was audited on Tuesday, and failed on two pieces of paperwork which were judged inadequate.

``That was quite a business -- there were four of them (inspectors), all of them trying to find naughty things.''

One had to travel to Eketahuna from Timaru and the farm had to pay travel costs.

``So far the total cost of compliance is nearly $3700, but my total turnover is only $20,000,'' Mrs Fraser-Davies told the MPs.

The premises should be inspected and the level of hygiene should be same as for a farmer milking 2000 cows, but the costs could be kept down by using local environmental health officers.

``The one at Tararua District Council is incredibly finicky - he wouldn't let anything suspect get past,'' she said.

As the Food Bill was currently set out, small food producers looked likely to be driven out of business by unreasonable compliance costs.

``If your cows are happy and healthy and give good milk, you're going to make good cheese,'' she said. Her operation had only had one failed batch in eight years: ``Colin went off and buried it in the woods''.

Mrs Fraser-Davies said a winner of the national champion-of-champions cheese competition a couple of years ago had been closed down by officials because he did not comply with their requirements.

Committee chairman, Shane Ardern, said: ``It does seem ridiculous'', but noted that the committee had not yet heard all sides of the debate.