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Food labelling privacy survey (NZ)
What is this survey about?
The New Zealand Food Safety regulations require every food label to include the registered physical address of the manufacturer. The purpose is to provide consumers with contact details in the event of a product issue.
This requirement dates back to pre-1984 food standards legislation (prior to the internet). It means that sole traders or smaller food service providers who run a business from home have to make their residential address public, on the label of every jar or package of their food product.
This raises some privacy concerns.
The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) currently provides a publicly searchable online register of all registered food providers. In the event of a food safety problem, the consumer can easily look up a food provider and is able contact MPI or the registration Local Authority to make a complaint.
MPI allows registered small providers (on request) to withhold residential addresses from the online register on privacy grounds, but the Food Labelling rules still require publication of their residential address on every packet or jar of product sold.
Andrew Hoggard - the Minister for Food Safety - has asked if other sole traders or smaller food service providers are also concerned about this privacy problem, to help make a case for changing the regulations.
This survey is a chance to provide your views in a response to the Minister.
Who should respond?
This survey is for New Zealand sole traders and small businesses producing food products to provide comments on:
1. whether the publication of residential addresses is a privacy concern or not, and
2. whether the Australia and New Zealand Food Safety Regulator should change the regulations to allow producers to choose whether to use their unique food safety registration identifier (or other means of contact) on food labels, as an alternative to requiring publication of a physical address.
This survey closes on
Monday 31st August 2026 at 23:59 (New Zealand time).
It will only take you a few minutes to complete.
Data privacy
Responses to this survey will be collated by the author and provided to the Minister for Food Safety in a reply to his question. Providing any personal contact details in this survey is optional. Contact information will only be used to provide updates (if requested) and will be deleted once updates are provided.
This tool is being used by the author as a way to collect data from sole traders and small business owners working from home who wish to have their views included in a reply to the Minister.
This survey has been created by Jason Price.
For questions, you can contact me at jpsurveys@icloud.com
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