'CoOL' stands for country of origin labelling.
New Zealand does not have mandatory country of origin labelling. This means food products in shops do not have to have any identification on them to say where they are from.

This means customers have less choice.
CoOL is about increasing the information shoppers have available to them so they can buy products based on criteria they care about.

We want New Zealand's country of origin labelling rules to at least match Australia's.

In 2005 when Australia and New Zealand agreed on the rules governing the Food Standards Australia New Zealand code, country of origin labelling was the only area we failed to agree on.

We should have the same rules as Australia, to at least make life simpler for food manufacturers and exporters sending product to both markets, and sending products to us from other countries. New Zealand is such a small market, most of the time it would be uneconomic for large food manufacturing companies to change their labels just for us.

In Australia any food product must identify the country of origin of whatever makes up more than 50% of the total production cost of the product.

For example, a jar containing 60% of pickled onions in brine must say 'Product of India' if the onions are from India.

All New Zealand's major trading partner countries have CoOL; Australia, the USA, the UK and Europe and many Asian countries.

 

New Zealand's major political parties oppose CoOL because they have always opposed CoOL.

Reasons to oppose CoOL include:

• The cost of changing packaging to reflect changes in content origin, estimated by Government to be about $60 million a year and likely to be passed on to consumers.
  CoOL New Zealand believes this is not a real argument to use because manufacturers change product labelling all the time for lots of reasons, including marketing campaigns (great recipes inside!), new product claims (99% fat free!) and updating nutritional information (gluten free, etc).
  
   
• It is considered to be an international trade barrier. New Zealand spends a lot of time being a good trading partner, trying to encourage other countries to 'free' up their markets. It is considered it would be a bad look for us to change our ways.
  CoOL NZ says: New Zealand takes its place on the world stage seriously and we like to be seen to be doing the right thing. Trouble is, we are simply being left behind on this one. Consumer demand for information outweighs the need to hold ‘holier than thou’ beliefs about free trade. .
  
   
• International food companies selling product in New Zealand would prefer Kiwis to assume they are eating Kiwi grown products. They can charge a premium price for premium brands which are perceived to be 'home grown' or 'home made'
  Only one major New Zealand vegetable processor – Talleys – claims to use only New Zealand grown product. None of the other companies, Heinz Watties, Cedenco or McCains can make this claim.