Government acknowledges misleading pork labels but refuses law change
The Government has acknowledged that some pork country-of-origin labels may be misleading consumers but will not change the law to address the issue.
Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs Cameron Brewer said he was not aware of evidence that misleading pork branding was occurring on a scale that would justify further regulatory change. Brewer suggested NZPork complain to the Commerce Commission if it had issues with the way any pork products were labelled, RNZ reported on 8 September 2026.
Brewer pointed to his Fair Trading Amendment Bill, which he said proposed to increase penalties for any misleading conduct that could affect consumers. The existing Fair Trading Act already prohibits misleading conduct in trade; the amendment would tighten the consequences rather than expand the scope of what is captured.
NZPork chief executive Brent Kleiss told RNZ that some supermarkets' pork products carried extremely small labelling on the back of the packaging stating where the pig was bred overseas, while being marketed as locally produced. He said he visited a PAK'nSAVE in Christchurch that had no New Zealand bred and processed pork products, such as ham and bacon, on shelf.
Kleiss said a parliamentary select committee recommended the Government look at clearer labelling of pork products three years ago and had received no response since then. The Regulations Review Committee made recommendations in 2023 to prevent potential misrepresentation of a product's country of origin, and the Government acknowledged the recommendation in its response, according to the committee report.
Kleiss was blunt about the minister's stance. He said the minister may have been misled or made a decision to get the issue off his plate rather than tackle it head on.
Foodstuffs, which operates PAK'nSAVE and New World, said it supported customers having clear and accurate information about the products they bought, including country-of-origin information, in line with labelling requirements, RNZ reported.
The regulatory backdrop is layered. Country-of-origin food labelling became mandatory in New Zealand for fresh or thawed food on 12 February 2022 and for other products on 12 May 2023, according to Horticulture NZ. The requirements cover fresh or frozen fruit, vegetables, meat, fish and seafood, as The Spinoff reported in 2018. MBIE publishes detailed guidance on the regulations through its consumer protection materials, noting the Regulations set out the specific labelling requirements.
NZPork has long argued that the current framework does not ensure consumers have accurate information about the country of origin of pork. The industry body states consumers might be misled by labels such as "Made in New Zealand" or "Locally Made" when the product in fact contains imported pork, according to its website. NZPork has also argued that clear country-of-origin labelling allows consumers to make informed purchasing decisions, stating in July 2023 that the parliamentary review committee's recommendation was a step in the right direction.
MPI, for its part, publishes labelling requirements for meat and meat products including poultry, covering offal and fermented comminuted processed products, on its website. The ministry states that most food for sale in New Zealand must be labelled and provides a form to report food labelling issues, directing place-of-origin complaints to the Commerce Commission.
The split enforcement picture is relevant here. MPI handles general food labelling compliance, but country-of-origin disputes fall to the Commerce Commission under the Fair Trading Act. That is the same body Brewer directed NZPork to complain to, rather than introducing new sector-specific rules for pork.
The broader context is that this dispute sits at the intersection of two regulatory frameworks that were never fully aligned. The Consumer Information Standards, which mandate country-of-origin labelling, prescribe what information must appear on packaging. The Fair Trading Act, separately, prohibits misleading conduct in trade. NZPork's argument is that compliance with the letter of the labelling standard does not preclude conduct that is misleading in effect — for instance, prominent "Made in New Zealand" branding on the front of a packet with the country of origin buried in small print on the back.
Brewer's position effectively treats that as an enforcement question under existing law rather than a regulatory gap requiring new rules. That is a defensible reading if the scale of misleading practice is, as he says, not evidenced. But the absence of evidence cuts both ways. No systematic investigation has been undertaken to determine the scale, and the Regulations Review Committee's 2023 recommendation to look at clearer labelling has gone unanswered for three years. Kleiss's frustration is with that inertia as much as with the substance of the decision.
For political observers, the pattern is familiar: a select committee identifies a gap, the Government acknowledges the recommendation, and the issue sits in the too-hard basket until it resurfaces. Brewer's Fair Trading Amendment Bill may increase penalties for misleading conduct, but it does not address the specific question NZPork is asking — whether current labelling standards are adequate to prevent consumers being misled about where their pork comes from. That question remains open.
