Australia's origin of labeling system up for debate

17/02/06 Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) is calling for public comment on a discussion paper about the feasibility of extending the new Australian country of origin labelling standard to include the labelling of two or less fruit and/or vegetable processed food ingredients.

Australia already has a new country of origin labelling standard that was gazetted in December 2005. The new standard will ensure that, from 8 June 2006, unpackaged fruit, vegetables, nuts, and seafood will be clearly labelled with their country of origin, whether that is Australia or another country. Unpackaged pork products will have to have country of origin labelling from 8 December 2006 and the changes to packaged foods, most of which already are labelled, will have to occur by December 2007. These changes are estimated to cost a one-off $60 million.

When the new country of origin labelling standard was agreed to by the Australia and New Zealand Food Regulation Ministerial Council in November 2005, the  ministers asked FSANZ to look at the feasibility of extending it further.

Under direction from the Australian Government, FSANZ has now prepared a discussion paper on the feasibility of extending this new standard to include the names of the countries where the fruit or vegetables were grown for products with two or less whole fruit and/or vegetables. For example labelling mixed frozen peas and carrots with the peas coming from Australia and the carrots from China.

The feasibility study looks at labelling of whole, shelled, diced, peeled, chopped or diced fruit and vegetables, such as peeled or chopped canned tomatoes, but not crushed or pureed tomatoes. It also includes, at the request of ministers, juices and soy milks with two or less fruit and/or vegetable ingredients.

FSANZ said it is seeking public comment about this discussion paper before finalising a report in March 2006, where a decision will be made about whether this is developed further into a food standard.