John Larkindale concedes he has very little direct experience with farming, except that the family business set up by his father was a supplier of cleaning products to the dairy industry.
He was on the periphery of trade negotiations during his diplomatic career, where agricultural issues were high on the agenda during his several overseas postings.
His first was to Vienna, a mission set up by Labour Prime Minister Norman Kirk to establish links with Hungary, Romania and other Eastern European countries and promote New Zealand farming practices.
He was ambassador in Russia from 1996 to 1999, when dairy exports were about $350 million a year and Anchor was the sixth most recognised global brand there.
When he was in China the ministry was involved in establishing model farms to demonstrate modern farming practices.
“In those relatively early days of the China/NZ relationship we were exploring the possibilities for the expansion of NZ’s export opportunities,” he said
“I was even then of the view that there were some courageous options the then Dairy Board could have pursued that would have resulted in even more profitable outcomes for the NZ dairy industry in China than those that have been achieved.”
One of his core tasks in London in the early 1990s, while the Uruguay Round was being negotiated, was to talk to British farmers’ groups. The head of the National Farmers’ Union, David (now Sir David) Nash, became a personal friend.
His challenge was trying to persuade British farmers that moving away from subsidies wouldn’t mean the end of life as they knew it, and that it was only a question of time before they were abolished. They simply could not keep pouring big sums into subsidies.
“We had robust discussions but they always ended up in a pretty friendly chat over a few pints afterwards,” he said.
He was appointed to chair the food safety work group by Martyn Dunne, director-general of the Ministry for Primary Industries, who had succeeded him as High Commissioner in Canberra.
“The work is of great importance to the country,” he said.
“We’ve got to get it right.”
He described his experience with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade as a pretty broad grounding that help to fit him for the job. He brings scientific training to it, too, and said the way he tends to approach most issues is to deconstruct them down to the base, then build them up again.
His leadership experience is reflected in the senior posts he held in the foreign affairs ministry and he has headed a variety of inter-departmental teams, including work with Australian groups.
“So I have a fair degree of experience in moulding people to work together towards a common aim.”
Having headed the ministry’s IT shop, he has knowledge of the potential of IT.
“I’m not an IT geek but I know how to find myself around things pretty well and I know in theory what you can do technologically,” he said.
“So bringing all those things together may give me some qualifications for the role to which I have been appointed.”
The working group held its first meeting in early May and has a tight schedule.
The report from the independent Government Inquiry into the Whey Protein Concentrate Contamination Incident was published in December last year. It recommended the working group be established and that a report on any regulatory requirements should be produced in six weeks and a pathway towards implementation developed in six months.
Completing the task by the end of October would be extremely demanding, Larkindale said, particularly when members of the working group have senior and responsible day jobs.
“It’s a big ask but equally it’s a big commitment from the other members – I’ve got no qualms about that,” he said.
The report from the independent Government inquiry essentially found the food safety regulatory model for dairy is consistent with international principles and among the best in the world. But consumers’ requirements were constantly becoming more demanding and efforts should be made to try to improve the regime.
“Traceability from farm to fork is something that more and more consumers, particularly in more affluent parts of the world, are looking for,” Larkindale said.
“Technology allows us to do things which we probably couldn’t properly do a decade or certainly two decades ago, so I think what we need to do is examine where there are weaknesses in the current system.
“Every system in whatever you want to look at has some weaknesses – so we have to identify those and shore them up.”
Essentially the aim is to see if NZ can develop a robust and cost-effective system, not to make marginal improvements but to establish a regime to meet the demands of NZ consumers and the country’s trading partners for the next several years.
“That’s where we would like to get to if we can,” Larkindale said.
“And of course we are not working in a vacuum. The EU, the Americans, the Chinese and a lot of people have their own regulatory regimes and requirements and we have to work in with our trading partners.”
He will be able to tap into ministry resources for research and materials and each member of the group has access to resources within their own industry organisations and companies.
“We won’t know until we launch into the detail if we have everything,” he said. “Maybe we will have to buy in some expertise.”
The group has set up a work programme to identify gaps and weaknesses in the system, find what is happening and what is required globally, try to anticipate changes in consumer and trading partner demands, and future-proof them.
“It’s a fairly logical sort of process and basically, as we look at each area, we will work out a block of work that needs to be done, then assign tasks to each member of the working group or MPI, depending on where the skills and expertise lies,” Larkindale said.
The offshore elements of the job will be the most challenging.
“We always used to say [doing foreign service work] that domestically the government has the power to compel, either with regulation or legislation, but internationally at best a country has 50:50 negotiating power with a partner, and if you are a small country often you don’t have that.
“So one of the real challenges in any traceability regime is that, if we want to, we can regulate – we can determine what NZ companies need to do on shore.
“But we can’t compel offshore, so it’s going to be challenging to make sure that whatever recommendations we come up with can interface seamlessly with our partners.”
The best the group probably could do – in terms of concrete and deliverable achievements in the time available – was come up with a set of regulatory principles (certainly nothing like a drafted up or refined set of regulations) to fit in with some other relevant legislative activity. And it should produce guidelines at least as to how those principles and any practical concerns can be addressed.
Posts around the world
John Larkindale was born in Wellington in 1946 and went to Victoria University. He went on to do a doctorate in chemistry at McGill University in Montreal. But he never practised – “a lapsed scientist, shall we say”. He also has a degree in mathematics.
He had several friends in the Foreign Service so applied, was accepted and came back to Wellington to join the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as it was then, in 1972. He retired in 2011.
He was posted to Vienna and Washington in the 1970s, looked after Tokelau as Official Secretary in the early 1980s and was deputy head of mission in Beijing in 1983-85.
In the 1990s he served as Ambassador in Moscow, accredited to most of the countries of the formers Soviet Union, and from 2006 to 2011 he was High Commissioner in Canberra.
In 1988-89 he was head of the ministry’s Property and Capital Management Unit, which then managed about $750 million worth of property world-wide
In the late 1990s he was head of the ministry’s IT shop, because the ministry wanted someone from the business to run it rather than be told by IT specialists what they thought was needed
From 2002 to 2006 he was deputy secretary of the ministry, responsible mainly for management and administration of the department as well as looking after Europe and more recently Australia.
Broad representation
The working group headed by Dr John Larkindale includes appointees from;
Food and Grocery Council,
New Zealand Retailers Association,
GS1 New Zealand,
Dairy Companies Association of New Zealand (DCANZ) which has two representatives, one of large-scale manufacturers and one from small-scale producers of retail-ready dairy products,
Infant Nutrition Council,
NZ Infant Formula Exporters’ Association,
One member each from the Ministry for Primary Industries and AsureQuality
