Extra food labelling spells higher prices, won’t work, says Australian Chamber of Commerce chief

IT’S a pointless waste of time and will force up the price of our groceries. That’s the blunt verdict on Tony Abbott’s latest proposal.

Chocolate bar pieces. Block. Broken.

TONY Abbott’s “serious knee-jerk reaction” to health risks from imported frozen Chinese berries will add to family food bills and won’t work.

That’s the blunt criticism of the Prime Minister’s about-face on extra food labelling from the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, usually a public Government ally.

The chief executive of ACCI, Kate Carnell, said Mr Abbott was overreacting to the 20 cases of hepatitis A linked to the imported Chinese fruit.

The Prime Minister, formerly a critic of additional regulation covering food labels, yesterday instructed two ministers to draw up a March Cabinet submission for ways to tell consumers how much of a food product was locally sourced and how much was imported.

“So our response to that is a mandatory labelling system that only affects Australian manufacturers,” Ms Carnell told news.com.au.

“It will cost Australian manufacturers more money, because they’ve got to put a new label on their goods. It doesn’t affect the products we are talking about at all.”

The Government plans for laws demanding labels listing the country of origin of food ingredients would not prevent similar health risks in the future.

“This (frozen berries) product … was labelled ‘Product of China’. It wasn’t labelled ‘Made in Australia From Imported Ingredients’. It was labelled, ‘Product of China’,” she said.

“So none (of proposed new labels) would have affected these products at all. So what are they doing?”

What they should be doing is concentrating on testing food imports as Australia continues to buy overseas more of what it eats, Ms Carnell said.

’Stop the oats’ ... The ACCI says the Government has overreacted to the frozen berry scare. Photo: Gary Ramage

“The problem is it seems to be a serious knee-jerk reaction,” she said.

“There is no doubt there is a problem with some products that are imported and there is no doubt that we have to focus on our testing regimen for imported products — are they adequately tested and are they tested often enough? They really have to address that.

“As more food products come in from overseas, the testing process has to be more rigorous. But making Australian manufacturers label differently doesn’t help that. The issue of labelling is a totally different issue.”

Ms Carnell, a former CEO of the Australian Food and Grocery Council, was publicly revealing concerns other industry figures have been expressing in private.

They are accusing Prime Minister Abbott of abandoning his deregulation principles to win populist support with the labelling move.

One food industry figure joked of the Government’s plans: “The stopped the boats, now they want to stop the oats.”

Ms Carnell said:” “I’m not for a moment suggesting it’s not the berries. I’m suggesting that we don’t have an epidemic.”

She said there was no emergency to warrant the labelling move. It had been calculated approximately 460,000 people had eaten the Chinese frozen berries identified with the hepatitis A cases.

Victorian medical authorities had suggested one per cent of those who ate them would be struck by hep A, she said.

“That would be 4600, and we have (20 cases),” said Ms Carnell. “Australia

would see 300 to 500 cases of hep A every year, which would be 25 to 40 a month.

“We would normally have 25 to 40 cases (a month) without berries. So the testing’s still out, but I’m just making the point: It’s not an epidemic, it’s not shocking and horrifying.

“It’s more or less in line with normal numbers of hep A.”