Over nearly two dramatic weeks Australia’s strawberry industry has been brought to its knees after a 21-year-old man from Brisbane swallowed part of a needle while eating the red-coloured fruit.

Two days later needles were reported to have been found in strawberries purchased in Victoria, which forced Australian supermarket chains to remove the offending punnet brands from their shelves on the eastern seaboard.

Coles and Aldi removed all strawberries from their shelves, while Woolworths continued to stock half a dozen unaffected brands.

To make matters worse, growers were trying to manage the effects of a bumper season, and suddenly they had difficulty finding buyers for their plentiful stock — many growers in Queensland and Western Australia were forced to unceremoniously dump the fruit by the truckload.

The issue was compounded by copycats who inserted needles into strawberries across the country.

This practice has now spread to apples, mangoes and bananas.

To deter these criminals the states of NSW, Queensland and Western Australia are all offering $100,000 rewards for information that leads to the apprehension of those sabotaging the foods.

The federal government has beefed up its food tampering laws so guilty parties face a possible jail term of up to 15 years in jail.

Australia’s strawberry scare has become global news with the BBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Times of India all covering it.

After the initial scare, strawberries have reappeared on supermarket shelves.

Farmers, growers associations and politicians — including Prime Minister Scott Morrison — have been calling for calm and encouraging Australians to buy punnets of the much-loved fruit again.

But the damage has already been done to many growers, with one on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast being forced to finish the season weeks ahead of schedule, destroying their crop and sacking 100 casual workers.

The damaging cost to the industry from this food safety issue has been difficult for experts to determine, but conservative estimates on Tuesday by Queensland horticulture peak body Growcom placed it at “millions of dollars”.

Numerous agricultural economists, growers associations, economic forecasters and retail buyers all declined to provide anything more accurate than the above number when contacted by Saturday Extra.

Dr Kim Phan-Thien, food safety expert from the University of Sydney, says the costs go well beyond revenue for growers.

“If you think about all of the costs that go into production — the planting materials, agricultural inputs, water, energy, labour, the people managing the crop, the harvesters, packers and the cost of refrigeration and transport — all of that is lost with no revenue in return,” she tells Saturday Extra.

“It’s lost income, but also those expenses have already been paid.”

Phan-Thien says that perhaps the biggest hurdle the strawberry industry now needs to overcome is regaining the trust of the Australian consumer. They need to be confident enough to buy the fruit again.

When the scandal first broke last week, the Queensland Strawberry Growers Association said it had “reason to suspect” the culprit was a former disgruntled employee of the Queensland farm whose needle-laced strawberries ended up on Woolworths shelves.

Since then nothing more has been said about this individual, however forensic psychologist Dr Chris Lennings, who has provided reports to courts at all levels and tribunals in NSW, the Northern Territory and Victoria, says the motivation behind the crime is critical to understand.

“In my practice I haven’t come across a person who is a food tamperer but, in many ways, it’s similar to what you find with people who defraud a company, or deliberately damage equipment.

“It’s a mixture of revenge, satisfaction and boredom,” he tells Saturday Extra.

He said the individual could be young or old, and could either be someone who has worked at the company for a long time and feels like they have been treated poorly; or somebody who has recently started and had a bad day with their boss and just wants to punish them.

“If you were to do a forensic examination, if you knew where it occurred, you would look at the workforce to determine who had a grudge, or had made comments that would suggest motivation for it,” Lennings says.

He said copycat behaviour was particularly troubling and was broken up into two categories: the first being young children who don’t understand the consequences of their actions and, second, bitter individuals who want to cause chaos and havoc.

“Some people are just plain nasty, and this is a way for them to be nasty.

“It’s an idea they hadn’t thought of and now someone’s put it in front of them and they say, ‘Well I can do this,’” Lennings says.

“They don’t really care about the consequences.

“All they want to do is bring suffering to big business or cause a bit of shock and horror.”

Lennings says the police investigating the initial suspect and the copycats would be pulling together the criminal profile of the person or group responsible for sabotaging the strawberry industry.

“The police probably do have a data bank of information about people who are engaged in food contamination and they probably will be mining that data bank to try and come up with ideas to see what they are looking for,” he says.

“The fact is someone or some group are sabotaging the industry and police would be wanting to investigate that, and out of that investigation they would be looking for any variables that might provide the means to identify the suspect or a motivation.”

Australia has strict food safety standards that cover all elements of the supply chain, from control of the growing environment, to the place the fruit is packed, transported, stored and sold.

Producers and processors are required to have Quality Assurance accreditation, strict guidelines to ensure each level of the supply chain is clean, hygienic and safe.

“Throughout the supply chain there is an assessment of the potential sources of contamination.

“Also identified are the places where you can control that and limits around those controls,” Phan-Thien says.

“Then there is also the monitoring, the response to that, and the documentation so you can trace what’s happened if there is an issue.”

Australia has had a number of food recalls over the years.

Earlier this year an outbreak of listeria in rockmelons resulted in the death of six people and infected a further 16 others. Three people from NSW and three from Victoria were killed between January and March by the bacterial infection, which is particularly dangerous for pregnant women.

Also in April this year a batch of frozen berries were recalled from supermarket shelves after they were found to contain hepatitis A.

This followed a much larger recall of frozen berries in 2015, which infected 12 people. The outbreak of disease was blamed on poor hygiene and water contamination in the source nation of China.

“All of these outbreaks do raise questions, and it is important to not be complacent and to question our systems.

“Are we doing a reasonable amount to minimise risk and to mitigate the consequences if things go wrong?” Phan-Thien says.

GROWERS IN BIG JAM SESSION

MID-north coast strawberry grower Anthony Sarks says while Queensland farmers may be dumping the fruit, his bumper season isn’t going to waste.

The excess stock from his Port Macquarie business Ricardoes Tomatoes And Strawberries ends up at the local jam-maker.

“We are a pick-your-own farm and any excess we have goes to strawberry jam.

“We, like other farmers, have had a bumper crop, which means we have excess fruit,” Sarks (pictured left) tells Saturday Extra.

“So rather than dump it, like we see a lot of farmers in Queensland doing, we have a local manufacturer in town who makes strawberry jam for us. Our challenge now is to get rid of a lot of strawberry jam.”

Sarks’ message to Australian fruit lovers is to keep buying strawberries to sustain the industry.

“Every farmer we lose is that one step closer to having to buy imported fruit, and none of us want that,” he says.

“We have had very good local support and we have had a little bit of an upturn in visitation (since the strawberry tampering issue).

“People can come and choose their own fruit, so if they don’t like that strawberry they can go and pick the next one.”

TIMELINE OF A DISASTER

September 9

Man eats strawberry contaminated by needle in Queensland, admitted to Sunshine Coast University Hospital with abdominal pain.

September 11

Another needle found in the north Queensland town of Gladstone, along
with two cases in Victoria. A mother in Kellyville Ridge finds a pin in a pink lady apple.

September 12

Woolworths removes Berry Obsession and Berry Licious brands from shelves in NSW, Queensland and Victoria. Pins found in punnets of strawberries sold at Coles Wingham and Coles Green Hills.

Queensland Police announces an investigation into the contamination.

September 13

Police and health authorities encourage consumers to cut up their strawberries before eating and warn of copycat cases.

September 14

Three needles discovered in a punnet of strawberries at Coles Engadine. Later that day Coles withdraws strawberries from sale in all states except Western Australia.

September 15

NSW Police says it has received reports of contaminated strawberries purchased at supermarkets at Tweed Heads, Taree
and Wingham.

September 16

Contaminated strawberries found in
Adelaide Hills.

September 17

Coles resupplies its stores with strawberries. Strawberry growers begin to dump
unsold fruit, putting the $500 million
industry at risk.

September 18

Strawberry industry calls for calm in wake of tampering issue and says the crisis has damaged the industry and cost growers millions of dollars. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announces $1 million in funding to boost the strawberry industry as farmers struggle following incidents of contamination.

September 19

NSW Police begin investigating a complaint about a needle that was allegedly found inside a banana at a grocery store in Condell Park. A Coles customer shopping at West Gosford discovers a needle inside a mango, which was purchased two days earlier.

September 20

NSW Police DNA test needles and packaging to track down copycat offenders after more than 50 cases of fruit sabotage are reported in NSW. Laws passed in Parliament against food contamination would mean food tamperers could spend 10 to 15 years in jail. Woolworths stops selling sewing needles.

September 21

An Adelaide father is charged over false allegations that his daughter ate a contaminated strawberry. Meanwhile, Northern Territory police confirm that a strawberry with a needle in it was found in Darwin, the first case of its kind in the Territory.