As a big importer of New Zealand dairy products, China has signed Free Trade Agreement Between The Government of the People's Republic of China And The Government of New Zealand with New Zealand government in 2008. Foodmate will introduce National Programme for dairy product monitoring and surveillance in New Zealand to help Chinese manufacturer who imports New Zealand’s dairy products to make sure the product they use are safe. The two programme are National Chemical Contaminants Programme (NCCP) and Independent Verification Programme (IVP), which nearly covers all the test items of dairy product except sensory indexes.


What is NCCP and IVP?

Both of the two plans are official programme under the Animal Products Act 1999 administered by New Zealand Food Safety which is one of the agency of the New Zealand Department of Primary Industries (MPI). They collect raw milk and dairy products from dairy season (1 July of one year to 30 June of the next year). NCCP monitors for a wide range of residues and contaminants in milk and other dairy products to ensure that milk and other dairy products are not a food safety risk and are suitable for export. Meanwhile, IVP tests collected dairy products in independent laboratories to check that they conform to acceptable microbiological levels for New Zealand, as well as those set by importing countries.

The tested Product Category of NCCP and IVP.

Both the two plans test raw milk and dairy product listed in Table 1:



The test items of NCCP and IVP

The test items are listed in the Table 2:



Summary

If the products is not in compliance with the regulatory requirements, severe penalties will be taken against the manufacturers and product traceability and rectification procedures will be initiated. However, the test results of these two plan are 100 percent qualified in the past three years, which means the dairy products in are of very high quality in New Zealand.