Chance for tighter standards on new food labelling laws

NEW country-of-origin food labelling laws agreed to by the Australian and New Zealand Food Regulation Ministerial Council are welcome news but don’t go far enough, according to Agriculture Minister Kim Chance.

The new labelling, which will help inform consumers who want to support local producers and buy Australian-grown products, will apply to fresh food, vegetables, packaged and unpackaged goods.

While Mr Chance and WA FarmersFederation President Trevor De Landgrafft welcomed the changes, they said more needed to be done.

Mr Chance said the industry had been seeking additional improve-ments on country-of-origin labelling and Food Standards Australia New Zealand would develop improve-ments during the next few months.

And although the changes were not as extensive as had been sought, he said it was a substantial step forward and expected FSANZ to complete its work within three months.

“While the new standard does not extend to identifying three whole ingredients as we had hoped, consumers will be much better advised as to the source of what they are buying, even when that product uses both Australian and imported ingredients,” Mr Chance said.

“Producers will have the benefit of knowing that their product is clearly differentiated from imported product in most cases.”

Included in the new standard agreed to by the Ministerial Council agreed are the requirement for identification of unpackaged pork and pork products, and processed unpackaged seafood, vegetables, nuts and fruits.

Unpackaged products will also be required to have a specific country-of-origin label, while packaged products will require distinct statement of origin information.

Mr De Landgrafft said in light of the flood of ‘own brand’ products set to dominate retail supermarket shelves, the guidelines would be critical in giving markets an edge against cheaper imports.

But he said the job was not finished and the challenge would be to extend country-of-origin labelling to packaged products with two or fewer whole food ingredients to deal with the ambiguity created by ‘made in Australia’ and ‘product of Australia’ labelling.