June2015_Eat Australian – Here’s why

Food safety was an area of some professional activity for me in my working life and this issue is now attracting considerable public interest following recent health issues with imported foodstuffs.

At the outset, let me reflect that despite what we hear, competition in commerce isn’t always a good thing.  We all know that competition between meat processors as they chase overseas sales means price cuts for our fat cattle.  But we are seeing intense competition amongst the supermarket chains for domestic food market share too.  The problem is that Australian growers have high input costs and they can’t stay in business if they get Asian prices.  So the supermarkets are increasingly sourcing low cost products grown and processed overseas.

This trend perhaps began with fruit juice concentrate imports from California.  The Scandinavian and Canadian sourced pork imports that followed virtually closed down the Australian pig industry – just as effectively as Asia car imports closed down our car makers. 

The trend has mushroomed alarmingly in recent times.  Maybe the sneakiest trick now is the frozen vegetables in our supermarkets that are labelled “Product of New Zealand”, but that are actually grown in China and staged through New Zealand via their Chinese free trade agreement.  I fear that the global economy is fast dictating that Australia becomes a ‘service industry’ country – which is code for “We don’t produce much here anymore, we swap our iron ore for goods and we get a living by mowing each other’s lawns”. 

So let’s very quickly visit the regulatory environment in which food is produced in Australia.  It adds significantly to the costs of production, but it means that we can have confidence that Australian food products really are ‘clean and green’.  It is important to understand that our regulatory environment has no counterpart in Asian food production.

All agricultural pesticides and veterinary drugs are licensed for use in this country by the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (AVPMA), which assesses all pesticides and animal remedies for registration for use in Australia in the light both of the recommendations of the International Codex Alimentarius and of Australian conditions.  

The Codex member nations, predominantly European and North American, establish safe daily intake levels for chemical products such as pesticides and for natural contaminants such as the heavy metals.  Following long and thorough expert scientific research and extensive international consultation, they calculate maximum acceptable residue levels for those chemicals in foodstuffs (MRLs).  I had the fortune to be part of the Australian delegation at a Codex meeting in the USA, and I can vouch for the thoroughness of the process!

The APVMA, in licensing products, regulates the way in which they must be used under Australian conditions, ensuring that they meet or exceed Codex standards.  Those conditions are included on the label – which is a statutory document and must be followed by users, at risk of prosecution.

The efficacy of our system of regulated registration and use is monitored by the Australian National Residue Survey (NRS), which samples Australian produce – fish, meat, eggs, fruit, vegetables, either randomly or in some cases according to a set protocol.  It is tested for contaminants – pesticides, veterinary drugs including antimicrobials and environmental contaminants such as heavy metals.  The NRS also monitors and tests the laboratories that do the testing to validate their results.  So the NRS both safeguards consumers and helps industry to spot incipient problems and to take follow up action.

The joint TranTasman government authority “Food Standards Australia and New Zealand” is the overall shop window for this system.  It collates and publishes information on permitted food additives, residue limits, permitted microbial loads and other food safety issues so that it is freely available to consumers. 

So in Australia we have very effective food safety arrangements for home grown produce.  They run under the authority of the federal government but they are funded entirely by our own industries.  They ensure that Australian grown food is just as safe as it possibly can be.  Most will know that in recent years we have seen a number of widely used pesticides deemed unsafe for use in this country and deregistered, recalled and destroyed.  These pesticides remain in everyday use in the course of much Asian horticulture. 

There is much ill-informed talk of the use of antibiotics in Australian animal production systems.  The use of antimicrobial drugs is so very highly regulated in Australian livestock production that the risk of our farmers creating drug resistant strains of microorganisms is negligible.  In contrast, antibiotic use is unrestricted in much of Asia – especially in the farming of fish and prawns in contaminated waters.  The importation of transferable bacterial drug resistance in imported foodstuffs poses a very serious and direct threat to the health of Australians.

In summary, most Asian countries now supplying our supermarkets with fresh and processed fruit, vegetables and aquaculture products do NOT have food safety controls comparable with ours. 

So for goodness sake, show the supermarkets what consumers want.  Pay the premium if you have to!  Take care to buy Australian!    

                                                      

By Ian Wells.