THE furore over contaminated imported frozen berries shows that the current system of labelling the origin of foodstuffs is mainly no help whatever for the average shopper to make an informed decision.
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A year ago, I complained to the NSW Food Authority that a packet of pistachios I was about to buy in Coles had the following useless information on the label:
“Country of Origin – Packed in Australia from imported product.”
The reply I received from Michael Apollonov, Labelling and Advertising Investigations Officer was:
“I am afraid the statement meets the requirement of the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code for Country of Origin of packaged food.”
Many packaged goods have labels such as: Made in Australia from local and imported ingredients. Nowhere does it say which part comes from Australia and which from overseas. Frozen crumbed fish have this notation on them. Are the fish Australian and the breadcrumbs imported? Or vice versa? Who knows?
I understand that New Zealand’s labelling rules are lax compared with ours, so much so that information on packaged foodstuffs from there is useless.
My wife and I care about where our food comes from and buy Australian when we can.
The least that can be done is to label things so we can make a rational decision.
P. Harrison,
Narrawallee.
