The registration and inspection of food businesses will change from March. This situation will happen in the Tasman District. According to Stuff, small businesses in the area fear the future of their establishment when the new Food Act becomes effective in March.

The Tasman District Council's environment and planning committee said last Thursday said that about 100 small food shops could have a higher compliance costs when the act is in effect because they have to find private companies to audit and provide inspection services for them.

Zoe Moulam, environmental health officer said that for this reason they might have a hard time financially and may be the reason for them to stop their business. She told councilors businesses like cafes and restaurants or high-risk businesses need to register in a food control plan and retailers or low-risk businesses need to register under the national program.

All registration will be handled by the council for most businesses in both systems. They required having an audit and inspection service for high-risk businesses that are under the food control plans.

The council didn't choose to have the inspection services for lower-risk national program businesses because if they did these establishments need to develop a written quality management system and apply for approval from the Ministry for Primary Industries.

"We're competent to deal with high-risk people but we're not competent to deal with low risk - we have to go through some accreditation process," a frustrated deputy mayor Tim King said.

Moulam said the private companies may charge more as the council did not have variable charges for travel time or mileage. Also, private auditing companies had to achieve ISO accreditation while the council did not, "so private enterprise compliance costs are higher and they could be expected to charge more to recover these costs and to make a profit". 

The Food Act is to come into force over a three-year transitional period.