Source: NZ Ministry for Primary Industries
Have your say
New Zealand Food Safety is inviting public comment on new self-assessable changes guidance documents and changes to the existing chemistry and manufacturing guidance. This consultation opened on 18 December 2025 and we are accepting submissions until 5pm on 15 February 2026.
New guidance documents
To better enable risk management for self-assessable changes to registered agricultural chemical and veterinary medicine trade name products, New Zealand Food Safety has developed 2 new guidance documents.
- ‘Self-assessable changes for agricultural chemicals’.
- ‘Self-assessable changes for veterinary medicines (chemical)’.
These documents now house guidance for existing self-assessable changes to clarify points where self-assessment was already enabled, and include new guidance for additional self-assessable changes that can be implemented without further scoping or policy setting.
These documents will be updated as new self-assessable changes, policies, and processes are developed.
Updated guidance documents
We’ve also made consequential changes to the main ACVM chemistry and manufacturing guidance documents:
- ‘Chemistry and manufacturing information for agricultural chemicals’
- ‘Chemistry and manufacture of veterinary medicines (chemical)’.
These documents have been amended to rehome existing guidance for self-assessable changes in the new guidance documents, and reference the new guidance.
We invite your feedback about any or all of the 4 documents.
Consultation documents
Self-assessable changes for agricultural chemicals [PDF, 318 KB]
Chemistry and manufacturing information for agricultural chemicals [PDF, 1.1 MB]
Self-assessable changes for veterinary medicines (chemical) [PDF, 386 KB]
Chemistry and manufacture of veterinary medicines (chemical) [PDF, 1.4 MB]
Background information
A self-assessable change is a change to the registration of a trade name product that does not require prior assessment or approval from the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) before being applied to the product or its manufacture. These types of changes are considered eligible for self-assessment because they present limited risk that can be managed by the registrant company. In each case, the registrant will have considered the change with respect to its impact on the risks and benefits as previously assessed by MPI, and made the change in accordance with established criteria. The registrant will then inform MPI of the change with confirmation of the impact on the product’s associated risks once actioned.
Making your submission
Email your feedback on one or more of the guidance documents by 5pm on 15 February 2026 to ACVM.Consultation@mpi.govt.nz
While we prefer email, you can send your submission by post to:
ACVM
New Zealand Food Safety
Ministry for Primary Industries
PO Box 2526
Wellington 6140
New Zealand.
What to include
Make sure you tell us in your submission:
- the title of the consultation document you’re commenting on
- your name and title
- your organisation’s name (if you are submitting on behalf of an organisation, and whether your submission represents the whole organisation or a section of it).
Submissions are public information
Note that all, part, or a summary of your submission may be published on this website. Most often this happens when we issue a document that reviews the submissions received.
People can also ask for copies of submissions under the Official Information Act 1982 (OIA). The OIA says we must make the content of submissions available unless we have good reason for withholding it. Those reasons are detailed in sections 6 and 9 of the OIA.
If you think there are grounds to withhold specific information from publication, make this clear in your submission or contact us. Reasons may include that it discloses commercially sensitive or personal information. However, any decision MPI makes to withhold details can be reviewed by the Ombudsman, who may direct us to release it.
