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1. Mr Speaker Sir, I thank Members for their support and thoughtful feedback on this Bill. FROM FARM TO FORK – ENSURING SINGAPORE’S FOOD SECURITY 2. The SFA will focus on food safety and food security. These are mutually reinforcing objectives. Food safety is a pre-requisite for a resilient food supply, and key to developing a thriving agri-food industry. Allow me to outline SFA’s priorities in these two areas, and address some of the specific comments. 3. I will start with food security. 4. Mr Ong Teng Koon referred to recent potential disruptions in our egg and seafood imports, and asked how SFA can better handle such incidents without causing alarm. The answer is that SFA will ensure our food security by developing and enhancing our three national strategies to obtain food. We call these our three “food baskets”. FOOD BASKET ONE: IMPORT DIVERSIFICATION 5. First, SFA will build on the existing work by AVA to diversify import sources. AVA has already expanded our import sources from 140 countries in 2004 to around 180 countries today. We take for granted apples from Poland, bananas from Ecuador, and Mandarin oranges from China in our supermarkets. These are in fact the fruits of a deliberate strategy to diversify our food sources. 6. Imports will remain our largest food basket for the foreseeable future – SFA, in partnership with relevant Government agencies like MFA and ESG, will continue to diversify our food sources as Er Dr Lee Bee Wah, Mr Melvin Yong and Mr Saktiandi Supaat have suggested. This includes working with importers to organise overseas sourcing trips and business matching sessions, as well as increasing the number of farms across different countries which can export to Singapore. In fact, our officers were accrediting farms in Thailand over the Lunar New Year break while many of us Singaporeans were taking a break and enjoying good food with our families. I would like to express my appreciation to our officers who have worked hard over the years to strengthen our food security and safeguard our national security. 7. Our food importers are also a key node in the supply chain, and we must ensure that they are prepared to withstand potential shocks from climate change and geopolitical developments as highlighted by Mr Mohamed Irshad. SFA will introduce requirements for importers of key food items to adopt plans to mitigate any supply disruptions. As Mr Ong Teng Koon has highlighted, food security is fundamental to national security. In the long run, securing our food supply is also the primary way to mitigate price volatility and spikes. This is a focus of SFA, which will continue to contribute to whole-of-Government efforts to provide affordable food, accessible to all Singaporeans, as highlighted by Assoc Prof Daniel Goh. FOOD BASKET TWO: GROW LOCAL 8. Second, SFA will intensify efforts to grow an agri-food ecosystem in Singapore as suggested by Mr Mohamed Irshad and Mr Melvin Yong, thereby reducing our dependence on imports. This requires close coordination between SFA and other Government agencies in domains such as land planning, industry development and financing, and skills training. SFA will also partner our industry stakeholders across the food supply chain to catalyse industry transformation. 9. Transforming the industry requires us to cultivate a generation of ‘agri-specialists’. AVA has been working with Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs) in this area. One such initiative is the ‘Earn and Learn Programme, a work study programme through which students from Temasek Polytechnic and Republic Polytechnic work at local farms and apply the knowledge and practical skills learnt in school. SFA will continue working with the industry and IHLs to enhance manpower development for the agriculture sector as raised by Mr Melvin Yong, and create meaningful value-added jobs for our future workforce. 10. Given our lack of natural resources such as land and water, the future of farming in Singapore has to be one that is technology and R&D driven, climate resilient and resource efficient with high productivity. Going forward, we expect to expand further into controlled environment agriculture in indoor vertical farming and deep sea fish farming in our waters. 11. We recognise the contributions by our existing farmers. They bring valuable experience and we will like to continue working with them to improve Singapore’s food security. We will take a pragmatic approach by helping existing farms modernise. 12. In addition to productivity, we will also prioritise the environmental sustainability of food production. As part of the MEWR family, SFA will work closely with NEA and PUB to find synergies in food production, water, waste and energy. This will ensure that our local food supply will remain resilient in the face of wider trends such as resource scarcity and climate change. 13. Together, we can become a world leader in agri-food solutions. Just like how we have turned our constraints in water to strategic advantages. Our Water Story, which Members, including Er Dr Lee Bee Wah and Ms Anthea Ong, had talked about, is well-known internationally. SFA will work together across the Government, and with industry and other stakeholders, including fellow Singaporeans, to write the Singapore Food Story. FOOD BASKET THREE: GROW OVERSEAS 14. Third, SFA will continue supporting our companies to expand and grow overseas. These overseas- based Singaporean companies will be able to overcome land and manpower constraints, and access new and bigger overseas markets. This allows them to bring down costs through economies of scale, and reduce the price of exports to Singapore. 15. Mr Henry Kwek has also rightly identified this as an area of tremendous economic opportunity for our local companies. Especially if our companies develop expertise in highly sought-after farming technologies – resource efficient, high yield, and climate resilient. 16. Barramundi Asia, which aspires to produce the fish equivalent of Kobe beef, has expanded to Brunei, where it is developing a 6,600-hectare fish farm to export an estimated 40,000 tonnes of fish back to Singapore. I hope to see more of our local farms succeeding in overseas markets. ‘DEMAND-SIDE’ STRATEGIES 17. Our three food baskets are what I call ‘supply-side strategies’. However, the demand side of the equation is equally important. SFA will continue to prioritise public education and outreach to complement the three food baskets as mentioned by Mr Mohamed Irshad. These include supporting local produce as suggested by Er Dr Lee Bee Wah and Mr Melvin Yong, and promoting the consumption of substitutes such as liquid eggs, and more sustainable foods such as plant-based protein as suggested by Mr Gan Thiam Poh and Mr Mohamed Irshad. I will also like to assure Mr Saktiandi Supaat that even as we allow new food to come in, SFA will take reference from global standards, such as those set by the Codex Alimentarius Commission, in permitting food additives for use in Singapore. 18. Ms Anthea Ong and Mr Melvin Yong raised an important initiative which AVA and NEA are already collaborating on – reducing food waste. In fact, food waste is one of NEA’s priorities in the Year Towards Zero Waste. My Ministry recognises that Government regulations may promote the reduction of food waste, and will look further into it with our partners, taking into consideration other factors such as food safety and business costs. I urge Ms Ong, Mr Yong and other Members to continue supporting community efforts to redistribute food better so that there is no hunger even among our needy, and in the process, reduce food waste. FROM FARM TO FORK – ENSURING FOOD SAFETY IN SINGAPORE 19. I will now move on to outline three strategies which SFA will adopt to ensure the safety of food in Singapore, an area which many Members have spoken about. ADOPTING A WHOLE-OF-GOVERNMENT APPROACH TO FOOD SAFETY 20. First, the formation of SFA will integrate operations related to food safety which currently reside across AVA, NEA and HSA. These range from providing a single contact point for the public to provide feedback as suggested by Ms Anthea Ong, to combining contact tracing and industry engagement operations. This will allow SFA to manage more holistically across the entire farm-to-fork supply chain to pinpoint and remedy critical points, and react more quickly to food safety incidents, as raised by Er Dr Lee Bee Wah, Prof Fatimah Lateef and Mr Saktiandi Supaat. 21. These efforts over the years have strengthened coordination across Government in response to food safety threats. I thank Mr Henry Kwek for recognising efforts by the agencies to keep swine flu out of our food supply. AVA, NEA and MOH work closely under the One Health framework and follow a protocol to respond to and address food-borne outbreaks. Information received by each agency, whether from individuals or doctors and laboratories, is tracked and analysed centrally to ensure that any unusual increase in notifications linked to food establishments is investigated promptly. REGULATIONS TO PROTECT FOOD SAFETY AND SUPPORT INDUSTRY 22. Second, having a single agency like the SFA will support consistent administration and enforcement of the regulatory framework for food establishments balanced against supporting enterprise and job creation. 23. As Er Dr Lee Bee Wah, Mr Mohamed Irshad and Ms Anthea Ong have suggested, we can harness technology and data to make our regulatory regime more effective and efficient. Let me give an example. Joyvio, one of the largest end-to-end fruit companies in China, developed an app that tracks the product’s thousand-mile journey from a vine to the supermarket shelf. With a simple scan, shoppers can tell which field the fruit came from, who was in charge of its production, what tests it went through before entering the market, and even details about the soil and water tests from the farm.

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