Ausbuy

How Safe Is Our Food?

July 22nd, 2007

Australian’s have grown up taking their “clean, green” food for granted. The combination of vigilant consumer groups, a well organised bureaucracy and powerful supermarkets have combined to ensure that food production in Australia conforms to “world best practice”. The farmers and producers have willingly co-operated, but it must be recognised that these practices have added to the cost of Australian produced food. When asked about this issue, the consumer has indicated that the government should ensure that these standards be enforced and should hold anyone who breached their standards fully accountable.

Times have now changed. The supermarkets have decided to market a huge range of “own brands” and are increasingly sourcing them from overseas. This is obviously not good news for the local farmers, as they feel they are not competing on a level playing field with suppliers overseas, who do not have to conform to the same health and safety regulations. This is an economic argument, but the question that this article addresses is whether the Australian consumer can have the same confidence in their foodstuffs, and if things go wrong, who is responsible.

The facts are not reassuring. Across Asia governments are struggling to control the use of chemicals and additives which are banned in Australia. The Australian government is not able to enforce regulations governing the growing and processing of food overseas. Customs cannot be expected to test all the vast number of containers of food imported into Australia. Most of the suppliers overseas who provide own brand goods have no investment in their name. In the unlikely event of them being successfully sued in a country like China, they would simply close down and reopen elsewhere. In this case the primary liability would rest with the supermarket who owned the brand and sold the produce.

Recent information would suggest that there is a very real danger of a major health incident. Although this is possible with good food from anywhere in the world, it is far more likely in the case of countries like China, which have weak and poorly enforced consumer safety laws.

This danger is not hypothetical as is demonstrated in the cases of pet food in USA and toothpaste in Panama, among others. If contaminated food can get through the rigorous US system, it can certainly happen here. The Australian supermarkets do some food testing, but is it sufficient to cope with the influx of own brand products? We must also recognise the increased sales of imported dried fruit, fresh fruit, vegetables, fish and small goods. Can the supermarkets identify carcinogenic food additives, mislabelled products or the use of dangerous pesticides and fertilisers?

If there is a major incident identified, it could result in a class action and we are all aware of the result of this on James Hardy. The supermarkets must extensively test all imported food as they cannot rely on being able to pass on the liability. They should also tell the public what precautions they are taking.

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6 Comments »

1. The above highlights the need to support Australian produced food, not only for the health of the Australian economy but for our own health as well. There is also a third reason to support Australian produced and that is the environment. Some of the chemicals still in use in some countries are very damaging to the environment and not only in the country of use - these chemicals travel over the world via air currents. A second point to the environment aspect is that locally produced food does not have to come from as far away and so therefore less fuel and resources needed to transport it than if it came from overseas.

   Comment by blackcat — August 6, 2007 @ 11:10 am

2. What a load of nonsense. We invent quarantine reasons as an excuse to keep competition out of our market and the consumer ends up paying more. We need only look at the way that, based on spurious science, we have kept New Zealand apples out of Australia. This is likely to end up as a case before the World Trade Organisation which Australia will lose – and the consumer will gain.

   Comment by Michael — August 9, 2007 @ 3:09 pm

3. Shops are supposed to give country of origin on their labels for fresh produce but do we know this information is correct? Who checks it and what happens if the lab is wrong? We point a finger at the supermarkets but the greengrocers and the fish shops are the real problems. Many of them provide no information on country of origin and nobody seems to care.

   Comment by sceptic — August 10, 2007 @ 3:17 pm

4. Did you know that the Australian Food Authority does not test for antibodiotics yet US testing has discovered that 15% of the seafood imported from China has antibiotic traces - and we wonder why we are developing drug resistant germs!
   Australian Quarantine test samples from 5% of imports. Our supermarkets can’t rely on them. At least the supermarkets give country of origin but what about restaurants?

   Comment by wiseguy — August 10, 2007 @ 3:31 pm

5. genetic engineering in food

   I didnt officially sign up for the blogging month, because I realized it was happening too late. Still I blogged right along with you and really enjoyed reading your daily posts. I hope they dont become too infrequent from here on out.

   Trackback by genetic engineering in food — September 2, 2007 @ 10:17 am

6. Vitamins Nutrition Supplements

   I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting

   Trackback by Vitamins Nutrition Supplements — September 13, 2007 @ 6:10 pm

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