NZ beef exporters will need to prove to the EU that their products have not come from land that was recently deforested. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images/File via CNN Newsource
The agriculture minister has apologised to New Zealand's top beef exporters for extra costs they will likely face due to new anti-deforestation rules for European Union imports.
Those sending agricultural products - like beef, leather or logs in New Zealand's case - will have to prove that their products have not come from land that was recently deforested.
Despite fierce opposition from New Zealand industry groups and government officials, the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) appeared to be going ahead.
From the end of the year, all exporters to the EU will be required to prove land used for forests has not been cut down for animals to graze on since 2020.
The regulation was amended to exclude sheep products in 2022 and its implementation was delayed last year.
But the beef, meat and wood processing sectors were preparing for the new incoming requirements.
It was announced this week that the Meat Industry Association, Beef and Lamb New Zealand and an analytics firm were developing aerial and satellite-generated farm maps, in addition to compiling the movement of livestock.
The New Zealand Deforestation Map initiative was to help the sector prepare the documents and data needed with each shipment of their products going to the EU from 31 December.
The regulation was expected to affect $213 million in beef and leather exports to the EU and $100m of New Zealand wood products.
Agricultural Minister Todd McClay. Photo: Neil Mackenzie
Minister 'banging on the table' for exemption
Minister for Agriculture, Forestry and Trade and Investment Todd McClay told the red meat sector conference in Ōtautahi/Christchurch on Tuesday that companies should get prepared for the incoming new rules.
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay speaking at the Red Meat Sector Conference in Christchurch on Tuesday. Photo: RNZ/Monique Steele
"Well done for preparing. I'm so very sorry this cost has been put upon you, because in my view it is unnecessary," he said.
"Since we came to government, I have consistently said to the European Union we have standards, the equivalent to yours if not higher, so you should not be putting costs upon every single producer in New Zealand, and we have been looking for ways to find exemptions or to changes, or to get the cost down."
McClay wrote to the European Commission last year, and said he met the European Commissioner in Brussels last month who suggested other countries were also trying for exemptions, like France.
"You'd figure when the EU member states don't like something, perhaps there's a change coming," he said.
But he said New Zealand already had native forest protection rules that resulted in penalties or prosecutions for offending.
"They have nothing to worry about in New Zealand. You're not allowed to deforest native forests in New Zealand.
"Ultimately I as the government can give an absolute assurance that it doesn't happen because we prosecute, we go and find these things."
He said it will likely impose "unreasonable" costs on producers, making it a barrier to trade, even while there was a free trade agreement with the EU now in force.
"So you need to keep preparing in case they don't get there, but we're gonna keep banging the table."
Photo: Supplied / Hamish Best
Mapping farms and tracking livestock
Industry analytics firm Prism Earth was a partnership between Silver Fern Farms and Lynker Analytics launched to meet the increased demand for carbon traceability, its website said.
Prism Earth was now using satellite imagery, aerial photography, LiDAR and artificial intelligence to map farms and identify grazing areas, forests and track animals via the National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) programme.
Also speaking at the red meat industry event, managing director Matt Lythe said the challenge was to accurately understand the conversion of land and animal movements.
"Every consignment will need to have a due diligence statement that essentially monitors every NAIT tag, every animal and its passage through the New Zealand landscape and the grazing process through all its dimensions, and whether it's past deforested land or not," he said.
"There are some record-keeping requirements that need to be held in place for five years, so it's a reasonably onerous obligation on us all to achieve."
Lythe said its modelling showed there were just under 14,000 hectares of beef production farmland to October 2024 where forests had been removed, and 1600 "affected NAIT" farms.
"So headline number, just under 14,000 hectares have had forest removal," he told the conference.
The main types of removal were pine rotation, followed by woodlots then shelterbelts.
The modelling showed 32 hectares of indigenous forest were removed, affecting 24 farms.
"I've highlighted the indigenous loss as really the key critical area that we're focusing on," he said.
"Thirty-two hectares of indigenous forest in New Zealand has been removed that breaches that European rule."
Owners of farms deemed to have been deforested would need to demonstrate to Prism that the removal of trees was not to convert land for agricultural use.
Lythe said farmers could mitigate the risk of cattle crossing into deforested land through fencing or other controls, and demonstrate that the removal of trees was due to either animal welfare, erosion control, health and safety or conservation and biodiversity protection.
The New Zealand Deforestation Map would be updated before December, and updated every year.
The Meat Industry Association was then expected to engage with the wider sector.
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