A food safety campaigner heading a conference in Dunedin says New Zealand has retained its reputation as being a model of food safety - despite a year of incidents involving it's agricultural exporters.
Global Food Safety Forum chairperson Rick Gilmore says that despite the hiccups New Zealand has made impressive progress on food safety controls, monitoring and certification.
Mr Gilmore says the world's detection systems, when it comes to monitoring food are more advanced than ever and he says the nature of the food trade is also much more complex.
"It's a global world and a global food supply ... close to 47% of world trade in agricultural products is intra-trade among multinational subsidiaries," he says.
"We can't think of trade anymore as originating in one country and going directly without intermittent value-addition steps in other countries or regions .
"It's a more complex market in many ways and underscores the need for food safety systems and risk-mitigation strategies," says Mr Gilmore.
