[4] It contains certain chapters labelled as "Australia only" which do not apply in New Zealand, and the New Zealand government has the discretion to refuse to adopt amendments which it disagrees with–an example is New Zealand's decision not to adopt the new Kava standard which significantly reduced the legal availability of Kava, on the grounds that doing so interfered with the cultural rights of Pasifika peoples.
[5] Within Australia, enforcement of the Code for domestically produced products is primarily the responsibility of the state and territory governments, with the federal government's enforcement role focused on food imports.
[6] In 1995, Australia and New Zealand signed the Joint Food Standards Treaty, which provided the legal basis for the Code.
In New Zealand, the Code was adopted in February 2001 and entered fully into force in December 2002.
[7] The Code is divided into four chapters:[8] The Code's cheese-making standards have been criticised as a "a wholly dysfunctional combination of prescriptive and performance-based regulation".