State government passes laws to hunt down ‘food terrorists’ as fruit contamination spreads
NSW Police are DNA testing needles and packaging to find copycat offenders in the bizarre berry terrorism that has gripped the nation for almost a week — with more than 50 cases in NSW alone.
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NSW Police are DNA testing needles and packaging to find copycat offenders in the bizarre berry terrorism that has gripped the nation for almost a week.
There have been more than 50 reported cases of fruit sabotage in NSW alone, with the latest a northern beaches primary school girl who found a needle in her apple at recess, with an eight-year-old Sydney boy confessing he put a needle in his watermelon.
The state government yesterday passed urgent laws to crack down on “food terrorists”.
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Detective Superintendent Danny Doherty said police were taking all reports seriously but were finding many copycats and some “self-contamination”.
At least two Sydney primary schools wrote to parents yesterday after two young students found needles in fruit. St Thomas More Catholic Parish Primary School principal Phillip Barrington told parents a young girl discovered a sewing needle in her strawberry during “fruit break”. And Oxford Falls Grammar School was put on red alert when a Year 6 student found a needle in an apple and reported it to her teachers.
Agriculture Minister David Littleproud said fruit saboteurs were “parasites” who “need to have the book thrown at them, and the book’s got bigger now”.
“The best thing we can do is to walk into those shops and to keep buying a hell of a lot of strawberries — that will stick it right up them,” he told 2GB’s Ben Fordham.
On social media, mentions of “smashastrawb” and “cutthemupdontcutthemout” have become popular tags as a show of support for struggling strawberry farmers, after many were forced to dump entire crops.
And taste.com.au searches containing “strawberry” rose 68 per cent on Wednesday, after increasing at an even sharper rate the day before. Searches for strawberry jam and muffins in particular have soared, after they more than halved when the sabotage scandal first broke.
Woolworths yesterday took the extraordinary step of withdrawing sewing needles from its shelves.
The supermarket giant is also expected to discipline a local team on the Central Coast over reports a staffer jokingly told a customer their strawberries now “come with free sewing kits inside”.