Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to Senator Ludwig, the Minister representing the Minister for Health and Ageing. My question relates to an article by Miles Kemp in the Adelaide Advertiser today that revealed South Australian health department officials recently conducted a random audit of 20 baby formulas which found that one in three had incorrect country of origin labelling and that the companies responsible were in New South Wales. In 2008, 300,000 infants in China fell ill and six died because they drank formula contaminated with the chemical melamine. Does the government concede that, because of our inadequate and incredibly lax labelling laws, Australian parents could potentially be feeding their infants baby formula from countries with appalling and potentially dangerous food standards and not even know it? What involvement does the federal government have in overseeing state and territory enforcement of food-labelling regulations?