Central Hawke\u2019s Bay Mayor Will Foley told RNZ the closures were a huge blow<\/a> at a time when there was already a lot of pressure on households and businesses.<\/p>\n\u201cI guess we\u2019re all sitting here wondering why what we think is a pretty good food-producing region is struggling to produce and compete with imported food products?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Green Party spokesperson for agriculture Steve Abel wrote to the Primary Production Select Committee on Monday to call for an urgent inquiry.<\/p>\n
![\"Green]()
Green MP Steve Abel speaking outside Parliament. Photo \/ Marty Melville \/ NZ Herald <\/p>\n
Abel said the plant closures would affect New Zealand\u2019s food resilience, cause job losses and threaten the viability of growers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is little public information about what led to these factories closing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the regulatory environment, energy costs, foreign-owner indifference to New Zealand interests, or anti-competitive behaviour from supermarkets is the problem, the public have a right to know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Abel said the country was heading towards a greater dependency on imported food, which put New Zealand\u2019s food security, food sovereignty and resilience \u201cat real risk\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am calling on all parties in Parliament to support this urgent inquiry as a matter of national significance for New Zealand\u2019s food system,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A harvester collecting sweetcorn for McCain in Hastings. The confirmation came three days after McCain announced it would…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355839,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[95,696,138,3043,5842,8606,29136,564,2082,23746,305,174624,37601,296,661,183707,111,139,69,4885,60269,92144,25444,23359,686,10119],"class_list":["post-355838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-and","tag-announced","tag-business","tag-call","tag-calling","tag-closures","tag-committee","tag-food","tag-for","tag-greens","tag-have","tag-heinz","tag-inquiry","tag-into","tag-major","tag-mccain","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-plant","tag-producers","tag-select","tag-urgent","tag-watties","tag-week","tag-within"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}