I, like most Australians like a bargain, but I also want to know what is in the packet. The Prime Minister, Tony Abbot, last week rejected the idea of compulsory country-of-origin food labelling. He based his view on the “additional requirement on business” that would make their life very difficult and which would “raise unreasonably prices to consumers because everything we do in this area has a cost”.1
The Competition and Consumer Amendment Bill 2015, first brought before the Senate on 12 February, would introduce a new food labelling regime to Australia.2 Under the bill, it would be an offence to supply or offer food that does not conform with food labelling requirements. Briefly, where all the significant ingredients of wholly Australian-manufactured food are grown in Australia or where packaged food is processed in Australia, very specific labels would have to spell out the connection to Australia in accordance with the provisions of the legislation. Further, country-of-origin labelling would be required for unpackaged food sourced from overseas. Similarly, unpackaged goods would require labels in connection with a display for sale, for example at a market.
Currently, the food labelling laws are not worth the packet they are written on. For example, ‘Made in’ means a product was at least 50 percent of the cost of production, which includes packaging, is incurred in the country.3 Thus, it is potentially worthwhile from a marketing perspective to make packaging half the cost of a food product to be able to pass it off as ‘Made in Australia’, while in fact manufacturing the food overseas using overseas ingredients in a country with lax food export standards. For example, you could be eating an Aussie meat pie, labelled ‘Made in Australia’, unaware it is a foreign product – a point well-made by Barnaby Joyce in 2008.4
Today, following the recent hepatitis A outbreak in frozen berry products, Tony Abbott finally relented in Federal Parliament, and agreed to deliver country-of-origin labelling that is “business-friendly”.5 This would significantly improve consumer confidence in Australia’s food security, and might even help out our farmers.
