Country of Origin Debate Rages on in Oz
(Photo: Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net) The consumer advocacy group CHOICE, has released the results of a survey it conducted highlighting the importance of supporting locally produced food products. CHOICE released the results of the survey which reviewed over 360 products across various food categories for the country of its origin. The categories of food looked into include cereals, biscuits, snacks, tinned goods and frozen packaged food.Of the most popular grocery chains Coles and Woolworths, Coles showed 55% of locally produced products and Woolworths just 38%. The Ausfoodnews.com website posted this about the survey: CHOICE’s sample of 100 market leader products, showed that 42% specified they were packaged locally with some or all ingredients from overseas. Of the Coles products, 63% were labelled as packaged in Australia from a combination of local and/or imported ingredients, while 71% of Woolworths products were labelled as packed locally but including ingredients of overseas origin, often of unidentified origin. While CHOICE recognised that the law in Australia says the term “made in Australia” means the product must have undergone substantial transformation and 50% of processing costs here, CHOICE criticized the vagueness of the legally acceptable origin claim “packed in Australia from an imported ingredient”. CHOICE said the latter did “not really explain much at all, except that an ingredient from a mystery country was repackaged in an Australian factory”. In July 2012, Australian Greens leader Christine Milne announced the Accurate Country of Origin Labelling for Food Bill in an attempt to protect both Australian consumers and farmers from this type of misleading labelling. Milne argues the bill provides clear food-specific country-of-origin labelling to allow customers to better understand where the produce they buy comes from and ensure a fair and transparent market for local growers. http://www.ausfoodnews.com.au/2012/09/06/choice-re-ignites-country-of-origin-food-deb ate-in-australia.html
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Choice is advocating the labelling of food products so that consumers are aware of where products are being grown and produced before they purchase it. Most respondents of the survey conducted by CHOICE demonstrated a desire to know where the food they ate came from. But why is it so important to know where our food comes from? Afterall as long as it tastes good it should be fine? But that is not the case. It’s always best to purchase food produced locally for a number of reasons. One of the reasons is to support your local economy and that includes supporting small businesses. A lot of the imported food is produced in mass and sold cheaply to large supermarket chains. The quality of such foods is maybe not as high as locally produced foods are. It is also important for the environment that you support your local manufacturers. By consuming imported foods you are increasing your carbon footprint. It is costing money, polluting the environment and burning fossil fuels to get your food to you from overseas. It’s better for the environment to eat locally produced foods. Another reason to eat foods grown and packaged locally is because the further the food has travelled, the less fresh it is and the greater the possibility of contamination. When transporting foods from overseas there are various issues relating to food handling that need to be remembered, that include: Effectively separating different types of foods being transported together, for example keeping cooked or canned foods away from raw foods. Cleanliness of the transport vehicles is also in question. Vehicles need to be cleaned and disinfected regularly and between loads. In addition to ensuring the vehicle is clean, the containers for transporting the food also needs to be clean and regularly disinfected in order to prevent the food from becoming contaminated during transport. Food being transported needs to be done in refrigerated trucks to ensure freshness and safety of the food, especially raw foods like meat or chicken. In addition to the overall safety and hygiene requirements, you must ensure that packaging you use for transportation purposes is clean and safe and ensure that staff are trained in safe food handling techniques and procedures.
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