At least eighteen people are now thought to have contracted...

At least eighteen people are now thought to have contracted hepatitis A after eating berries packaged in China and Chile by Victoria-based Patties Foods.1 The Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, said on Thursday there was “100 percent screening of these sorts of imports until this matter is resolved in a way which is very protective of the health of the Australian public”2 However, the Prime Minister’s Office later clarified the Prime Minister was only speaking about products being imported by producer Patties. One only needs to look at the recent history of Australia’s food safety regime to see how unreliable and unresponsive it is.

Patties-owned Creative Gourmet, which is subject to the berry recall, was found by Today Tonight in 2013 to have been importing their berries from a variety of countries, including Chile, Serbia, China and Poland. The report interviewed an Australian farmer who said he cannot compete with cheap labour costs overseas.3 In addition, the report discovered that Creative Gourmet contained Carbaryl – a cholinesterase inhibitor that is a likely human carcinogen. Other suspected or likely carcinogenic fungicides were identified in Select mixed berries and Select raspberries and Coles raspberries. McCain imported all their berries from Chile and parts of China, and Sara Lee used imported ingredients as per the label on their packaging.4

In February 2014, Senator Xenaphon asked Agriculture Department officials at a Senate estimates hearing about the testing programs for imported raspberries and whether additional testing had taken place following the findings by Today Tonight of carcinogenic fungicides found in various berry products.5 The answer was that under the Imported Food Inspection Scheme (or IFIS) “foods, such as raspberries, are subject to surveillance monitoring at the rate of five percent of consignments… imported raspberries are sampled and tested for the presence of 49 agricultural residues (the department’s imported food pesticide screen)…No additional testing has taken place in response to the Today Tonight report.”6 There was no evidence of checking for hepatitis A.

Again in the light of the current berry recall, the Agriculture Department officials were grilled by Senate estimates on Monday about their official response. “The community can be assured we have acted decisively”, said Dr Paul Grimes, Secretary of the Department.7 However, he admitted, “But we have not made changes on surveillance rates for berries broadly at this stage.”8 For surveillance rates, read surveillance of fungicide chemicals, because there is no publicly available evidence of hepatitis A testing for berries broadly. All this in the context of Patties CEO, Steven Chaur, admitting no Australian commercial food production testing facilities are equipped to test for viruses, such as hepatitis A.9

Several legal questions arise in response to this case. How long before a class action case is brought before the courts? If Australia’s food safety regime cannot be trusted what faith can there be in Australia’s biosecurity regime? How many other food imports, whether fruit, vegetables or shellfish, are coming into Australia with hepatitis A, raising potential future legal and health issues? Why does China impose an importing country’s food standards as well as its own domestic food regulations on imports, whereas Australia only imposes domestic food standards, meaning Australians are potentially sold food China does not want?10 In short, Australian food safety is deficient, piecemeal and unresponsive.

Footnotes

1. ‘Berries under No Greater Surveillance Following Hepatitis A Outbreak’, The Sydney Morning Herald (Online), 23 Feb 2015 <http://www.smh.com.au/federal-polit...ng-hepatitis-a-outbreak-20150223-13m82u.html>.
2. Ibid.
3. ‘Do You Know What is in Your Frozen Berries?’, The Lunchbox Club, 24 Feb 2013 < http://www.mysupernanny.com.au/blog/article/226-do-you-know-what-is-in-your-frozen-berries>.
4. Ibid.
5. Commonwealth, Parliamentary Debates, Senate, February 2014, QON 82.
6. Ibid.
7. See above nn 1-2.
8. Ibid.
9. Darren Gray & Deborah Gough, ‘Class Action Lawsuit Looming over Imported Frozen Berry Hepatitis A Scare’, The Age (Online), 18 February 2015 <http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/c...berry-hepatitis-a-scare-20150217-13gxw6.html>.
10. Hans Hendrischke & Wei Li, ‘Contaminated Berries Scare Unlikely to Slow China Food Exports’, The Conversation, 19 February 2015 <http://theconversation.com/contaminated-berries-scare-unlikely-to-slow-china-food-exports-37712>.