Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In continuation, I was saying that the Imported Food Inspection Scheme of Australia creates two categories of food for inspection. The first is the high- and medium-risk category, where 20 consecutive consignments are looked at over a period and if the inspection of those consignments, at varying rates, finds no problems with the product, then the inspection rate is reduced to five per cent. Unfortunately, those consignments can be just one carton of food, and that carton can be delivered as a new consignment every day for 20 days. Of course, the importers are not foolish; they understand the system very well, so they make sure that product is squeaky clean. There is a serious problem there, I believe.

Then we have the low-risk category called 'surveillance food'. Samples of surveillance food may be analysed for pesticides, antibiotics, microbiological contaminants, natural toxicants, metal contaminants and food additives. But in fact the inspection usually only involves visual label assessment. It may include some sampling of the food for application of analytical tests, but it does not have to. I am concerned about this surveillance category because it includes tinned fruits amongst its products. You might say that tinned fruits have been processed, they have gone through a significant heating process during manufacture, so they are probably going to be okay—wherever they have come from. But our experience is different when we have had, in particular, three-kilo cans of peaches tested in Australia by the National Measurement Institute last year, and elevated levels of lead were found in those three-kilo cans of imported peaches.

As required by the system, it is the states who, if notified of a problem of contamination, are supposed to decide on a recall or not. Virtually all states in Australia were notified of this lead contamination issue in the three-kilo cans of imported peaches, and no state chose to put out a recall or removal of that product from shelves. It would have been difficult, I have to confess, because a three-kilo can of product is most likely going to be in the hospitality or services industry, being served to hospitals, prisons, defence forces and school canteens. But, quite clearly, the surveillance food risk category for that product is not the right category.

More recently, at the beginning of the year, more canned peaches—imported from China—were inspected and found by the RMIT testing regime to contain not only elevated levels of lead but also arsenic. I am most concerned that none of that product has been withdrawn or recalled. In fact, since the contamination of that product was made known to numbers of governments, there has not been any feedback at all. So we have to make sure that with this bill, where we are looking at the costs of the Imported Food Inspection Scheme, those costs are right. We also have to make sure that the way we calculate those costs is right and that the party who is responsible for importing the product is charged. All of that is very important and, therefore, I support this bill.

What I am identifying is that we have a problem between the state and federal governments' coordination of food inspections. The states, in particular, are supposed to make sure that the food is fit for human consumption and is not likely to cause any illness or bad effect right through to its serving on a plate in a school canteen or a restaurant, or even in the home. States virtually no longer have food inspectors out in the system. Local councils once provided the pie and sausage inspectors; they are virtually non-existent now. The regimes, I believe, are under serious pressure in terms of the number of people who are dedicated to the task and the resources that are committed to this task. Under Labor, as we know, there was a slashing and burning in particular of biosecurity services. We really do have to protect the interests of our consumers in Australia. We have to make sure that the labelling shows not only whether the product is more or less 50 per cent grown, manufactured and made in Australia; the consumer also wants to know: where did the product actually come from? There is a lot of understanding about the different food safety regimes in different countries. Consumers are not stupid. They want to know. So that will, I think, be an important part of the consultation and feedback on our new food labelling laws.

I am commending this bill to the House but I am also saying that it is an area that we have inherited with a lot of flaws. I know the Minister for Agriculture understands this. He has to work through COAG to try to bring our states into line so that we have consistent food safety regulation and appropriate risk and surveillance categories. I think we need to revisit the manufactured fruit, particularly canned fruit, being in the surveillance or 'low risk' food category, because our random inspections of canned fruit from some countries has given us great cause for alarm. We cannot afford to have a situation not only where people become ill with hepatitis A but where, over multiple uses of, say, a product containing high levels of lead, we do serious damage to our children and our elderly. So I commend this bill to the House, but I also commend to us, in a bipartisan way, a comprehensive and thorough relook at how we test imported product that comes into this country so that we can make sure that we do not have two different regimes—one for exported product, which is of one of the world's highest standards, and a lesser standard for imported product. This is especially important as we import more food, which I am always concerned about when we have our own home-grown product, and when the supply chains are ever more complex. It is no longer just a case of saying, 'That product came from Taiwan'. Often the product was caught in Australia, was sent to Taiwan, was manufactured there, was marketed through some other country and finally ends up with very unusual labelling of country of origin on our 'no name' shelves in our supermarkets.

See this speech in context