Giving Away Our Food Future

By: Lynne Wilkinson

Cheap imports are undercutting Australian farmers and deceiving consumers.

WHO IS looking after our interests?

Why are we seeing the volume of imported foods growing, in direct competition with our own producers and manufacturers?

AUSBUY is concerned many of our decisions are fraying the competitive advantages our food industry enjoys in our clean, green, growing environment.

The Australian food industry employs more than 500,000 people, in highly skilled and low-skilled jobs.

It is the largest manufacturing sector we have left and represents hundreds of billions of dollars in turnover.

It is as important to our economy as the mining sector, yet we fail to protect it.

If we want a future for an industry which has been the cornerstone of our national wealth, then we need to understand how our own choices can be sympathetic to our future.

There are countless examples of how governments and corporations have been extremely unsympathetic to our food producers.
Our labelling laws do not identify the country of origin of many of our foods – we have labels such as "Made in Australia", but these deceive consumers unless the source of the food is identified.

New Zealand has a free trade agreement with China. Much of our frozen food comes from New Zealand, but labels do not show the true source.

We have signed free trade agreements that are not to our advantage and put our producers at risk due to potential diseases from, for example, apples from China and New Zealand, stone fruit from Chile and bananas from Philippines.

Many countries that export to us do not have the same level of wages, occupational health and safety and growing protocols as those required of our producers.

Our food importers say they supervise quality control in China, but poor practices remain.

The UK Guardian newspaper, in February this year, cited an official Chinese survey declaring that "Chinese farms cause more pollution than factories, with farmers' fields a bigger source of water contamination than factory effluent".

In the past year, fresh food imports from China to Australia have increased 27 per cent, displacing New Zealand produce.

Fresh-produce imports from the US, Peru, Mexico, Thailand and South Korea have also increased substantially.

Instead of sourcing from our farmers, supermarkets import cheap products for their private labels.

Our high dollar means imports are cheaper and if consumers do not discriminate, they are buying our farmers' demise.

Global food companies close factories here, go offshore and source produce overseas, leaving our farmers with no ready markets for their produce.

Despite many letters from AUSBUY to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Heinz still has Golden Circle labels declaring “Proudly Australian owned", 17 months after the farmers' cooperative was bought and two months after the ACCC had Heinz give away 80,000 cans of food as a penalty.

AQIS is under-resourced, yet sends staff overseas to work with foreign farmers to get their product up to our standards, in direct competition with our farmers.

An example of this is navel oranges from the US.

Representatives from the US sit on our Biosecurity Council – a government body that is supposed to assess threats in our interests.

We give away our intellectual property, in direct competition to our own producers.

We export live cattle to China and our scientists work with them to produce for self-sufficiency or in direct competition with our markets.

Meanwhile, mining companies use precious water that would otherwise go to food production.

AUSBUY feels it has been a lone voice promoting the cause of Australian-owned companies since 1991. It has always been about giving consumers information so they are empowered to spend their money in the interests of other Australians.

We think we are entitled to know where our food comes from and who really owns it.

This article appeared in the Weekly Times on 19th May 2010

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