Hangi? NZ food act will see unlicensed online sellers fined

I have no idea what hangi is, but because of the Intertubes, I looked it up (and wiki is never wrong):

Maori-HangiHāngi (Māori pronunciation: [ˈhaːŋi]) is a traditional New Zealand Māori method of cooking food using heated rocks buried in a pit oven still used for special occasions.

To “lay a hāngi” or “put down a hāngi” involves digging a pit in the ground, heating stones in the pit with a large fire, placing baskets of food on top of the stones, and covering everything with earth for several hours before uncovering (or lifting) the hāngi.[1]

According to New Zealand regs, selling homemade hangi without a licence could soon land people with a $450 fine.

The online sale of hangi and other food items has caused an influx of complaints to the New Plymouth District Council recently.

The council’s manager of regulatory services Mary-Anne Priest said phone calls about Facebook pages being used to sell homemade food, and in particular hangi, were growing.

“The staff here have said they’ve handled more complaints about food recently than ever before. People are seeing food for sale on websites and ringing the council to see if it’s ok,” Priest said.

“When we contact the sellers a lot of them seem a little bit unaware that they are required to be licensed. Once we have spoken to them a lot of them have stopped selling.”

She said one-off sales for fundraising events were exempt and the council was not concerned about those.

“But we will go and investigate if people are selling for personal gain.”

Priest said if the online sale of food from unlicensed sellers and unregistered kitchens continued after the Food Act 2014 came into effect in March, then sellers could be hit with a $450 fine for operating without a licence.

She said there would be significant changes happening under the new act and the regulations were due to be released by central government in the next two weeks.