BORDER consumers concerned about misleading country of origin labels on groceries have been urged to speak up.
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Businesswoman Jodie Goldsworthy said it was imperative people took part in a government survey on the issue.
If they didn’t, major food production companies who have showed resistance to any change would hold sway, she said.
Mrs Goldsworthy is the owner of Beechworth Honey, which is based in Corowa and recently opened its Beechworth Honey Discovery Centre.
Yesterday she got the opportunity to discuss what she considers Australia’s woefully inadequate country or origin labelling laws in Canberra with Agricultural Minister Barnaby Joyce.
She was in Canberra for the release of the federal government’s latest Australian Beekeeping survey.
Mrs Goldsworthy said Mr Joyce told her there had so far been only 8500 respondents to the government’s online community survey on the issue.
“He said the government needs to hear the voices of consumers on this,” she said.
But Mrs Goldsworthy said industry with a vested interest in sustaining the status quo on country of origin labelling had so far dominated the debate.
People have until July 3 to respond to the survey, which can be found at industry.gov.au/industry/IndustrySectors/FoodManufacturingIndustry/Pages/Country-of-Origin-Labelling.aspx.
Mrs Goldsworthy said a lot of food producers — such as farmers and apiarists — in Australia objected to current food labelling because it lacked the detail consumers wanted.
She said labels such as “made from imported and Australian ingredients” were meaningless to many people concerned about where their food was sourced.
That was especially given such labels gave no clear idea of whether ingredients came from countries that lacked the stringent standards of countries such as Australia or New Zealand.
Mrs Goldsworthy said a far better system would involve using labels that gave a clearer idea of where the majority of ingredients were sourced.
That might a label that, for example, revealed 80 per cent of a product’s ingredients were sourced from China and 20 per cent from Australia.
Mrs Goldsworthy said having this type of information allowed people to make an informed choice.
“This is something I have been passionate about for many years,” she said.
“I think the big catalyst was with the berries linked to hepatitis A cases and the trouble they had in working out where those berries were coming from.”
Mrs Goldsworthy said it was imperative that anyone concerned about labelling laws had their say through the survey.
You can complete the survey here:
