FoodLegal Bulletin, June - July 2010

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The United States has announced a ban on the use of the pesticide Endosulfan. FoodLegal Bulletin previously has written on this issue twice and about the need to review the Australian position. In this article, we consider the current bottleneck in Canberra on this issue.

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I recently visited Israel and was very impressed by an array of outstanding technologies that I saw in agricultural and food industries during my visit. Several dairy groups and leading research companies showed me various technologies being used by the dairy industry.

One of the most interesting ones was an electronic technology to monitor the natural behaviours of animals. The following article elaborates on this technology.

Around the world, food marketers emphasise the goodness of all things ‘natural’, so it is unusual to see a technology that can enhance a more natural way of doing things. While the Israeli dairy industry itself operates on very intensive feed-based lines and lacks the space for pasture-based dairy production systems, nonetheless some technologies have potential for use in ‘organic’ and other natural systems of production too without compromising the organic or natural status of the final product.

This article features a technology called the Heatime® system, which potentially facilitates reduced usage of hormones and antibiotics. It provides a simple illustration of how farmers can maximise the goodness of nature through a man-made technology. Unfortunately there are some people who decry modern technology for farmers and seemingly prefer ‘natural’ disasters to the alternative course of taming the best of nature for the common good

Over the past 2 years, FoodLegal has been involved in handling the legal issues involved with situations of threatened and actual withdrawals or recalls of food products. In some cases, the situations involved voluntary actions initiated by food companies or their suppliers. In some cases, the issues arose because of demands or actions instigated by government agencies, such as AQIS, the NSWFA, and the Victorian DHS, or by major supermarket operators.

A plethora of factors can influence the decisions to withdraw or to recall a particular food product. The nature of the food product, the nature of the hazard, the adequacy of the claims, the scientific assessment of the risk, the truthfulness of the product labelling, the presence of any contaminant, residue or allergen and the alternative usage for the product are often relevant. Furthermore, depending on the facts, there can be different legal consequences and different commercial considerations, insurance issues and product traceability issues to consider – apart from the foremost legal obligation to protect the consumer of the affected product.

This article examines a recent announcement by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) concerning a review of the product safety recall system in Australia, and significant changes to affect Australian food businesses and their suppliers. These will also impact on food companies as explained by this article.

This article examines the problems created by the lack of enforcement powers for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) in relation to enforcing the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code. The article also raises questions about co-ordination between the ACCC and the States and municipal food regulatory enforcement agencies.

The Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code prescribes a mandatory nutrition information panel on a food label to declare the saturated fat content of the food. How flexible are our existing fat labelling laws to cope with new scientific findings?

The current “safe harbour” provisions of the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code permit the Country of Origin descriptor ‘manufactured or packaged in Australia from local and imported ingredients’. This article examines the potential disconnect between country of origin claims required by the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code, compared with the Trade Practices Act safe harbours as well as the obligation to meet the average reasonable consumer’s expectations of an origin label representation.

The growth in recent years of demand for organic foods stimulated the quest to create a uniform, national framework to regulate the manufacture and sale of organic products in Australia. In this article, we look at the new standard for domestically produced organic foods as well as the separate export/import standard. This article examines the prescriptions for food to be ‘organic’ and considers in what circumstances there can be a loosening in strictness of organic production standards. One aspect to consider is whether all or only some organic foods can demonstrate superiority over their equivalent in conventional food, and whether there may be a convergence in some categories. Clearly the marketing of organic food as a premium sub-category creates opportunity for growth of the organic category in conventional supermarket retailing. Will current laws be adequate?

• NSW Food Authority v Primo Smallgoods: enforcement of country of origin labelling
• Trade Measurement Regulations become Federal Law on 1 July 2010
• Victorian Food Act amendments effective on 1 July 2010
• The Heart Foundation and Coles supermarkets are embroiled in a dispute over the logo of the Coles Smart Buy own-brand line. 
• NZ outlaws kosher slaughter
• Tasmania to get its own Foodbank