Inquiry calls for clearer Aussie labelling

Chair of the House of Representative’s Standing Committee on Agriculture and Industries inquiry and SA Liberal Rowan Ramsey says the changes will be welcomed by discerning consumers and Australian farmers.

The inquiry started in March after being referred to the Committee by Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce and Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane.

Its key aim was to investigate whether the current system for food labelling provides enough information for Australian consumers to make informed purchasing decisions and whether Australian laws are being complied with.

The report was tabled last month making eight recommendations including changing current CoOL “safe harbours”.

Mr Ramsey said the major recommendations concerned splitting manufacturing and contents into separate label headings, or entities, to help identify the food product’s composition.

The report said current food labelling claims go to production or manufacturing rather than actual content.

“A food product with a ‘Made in Australia’ label will ‘not necessarily contain Australian ingredients’, though the Department of Industry stated it would be ‘surprising’ if the requirements of the safe harbour could be met without any Australian contents in the food product,” it said.

Mr Ramsey said the current safe harbour descriptor of ‘Made in Australia, from locally and imported produce’ doesn’t provide enough information to track the product’s authenticity.

“We want to keep that part of the value but then we want to be able to say, ‘Made in Australia from Australian contents or Italian tomatoes or just imported ingredients’,” he said.

Mr Ramsey said the key recommendations also allow a label to say, ‘90pc made in Australia from Australian contents’, or ‘50pc made in Australia from mainly Australian contents’.

A level below that would say ‘made in Australia from Taiwanese tomatoes or whatever’.

“Using the same words all the way down the line gives consistency to consumers and they will be able to clearly identify the language because clearly they can’t identify what it means at the moment,” he said.

In its response to the report, Ausveg said proposed changes to the CoOL system would not necessarily provide consumers with greater clarity about the origin of their food.

It said fears many of the recommendations contained in the report could leave consumers no more enlightened than before.

“The Committee’s suggested reforms to country of origin claims, while clearly showing a willingness to move on from the current system, will run the risk of continuing to confuse consumers,” Ausveg spokesperson Andrew MacDonald said.

“If Australian consumers are to gain benefits from a reformed labelling system, claims must be simplified and unambiguous, with consumers able to tell at a glance the source of a product and its major ingredients.”

In its submission to the Inquiry, Ausveg supported scrapping the “Made in” label entirely, replacing it with “Manufactured in” to ensure consumers were not misled as to the origins of a product’s ingredients.

“Claiming a vegetable product was ‘made in’ Australia leads customers to believe that the vegetable ingredients were grown in Australia, when often under the current system, ‘made in’ simply refers to where manufacturing costs occurred,” Mr MacDonald said.

Mr Ramsey said another key recommendation was to make the wording which identifies the food product’s country of origin, 25 per cent bigger than the surrounding text, on the final printed label.

He said if manufacturers see a perceived market advantage in saying ‘This product is 100 per cent Australian’ they already do it and the committee’s recommendations won’t stop that happening.

“We’ll be encouraging them to do exactly the same thing as they are now,” he said.

“But where they fall back on these safe harbour descriptors, the ‘Made in Australia from local imported ingredients for instance’, these changes are going to provide more clarity around something that’s very obscure.

“Now if it’s providing more clarity and more consumers can make a decision on the shop floor about supporting Australian, I think Australian farmers will be happy.”

Mr Ramsey said he was “very hopeful” the recommendations would be acted on by government and implemented.

“Some of the inquiries that have gone before this one - particularly the Blewett Review – were very wide and sweeping across many areas,” he said.

“But we managed to keep this inquiry very narrow and just focussed on country of origin food labelling and because of that, it’s something that governments can digest.

“Because the (recommended) changes are relatively minor for the manufacturers, we won’t see too much resistance there either.

“There will be some disappointment from some parts of the industry who would basically like to see some protective tariffs put in place - but that wasn’t the Committee’s role.

“We were actually looking at providing information for consumers so they can make more informed purchasing decisions.

“Not every consumer, but a significant percentage of them want to know and want to make a decision in favour of Australian farmers and or manufacturers.”

Mr Ramsey said he’d now discuss the report’s contents with the relevant ministers - Mr Joyce and Mr Macfarlane - and Small Business Minister Bruce Billson.

He said if concerns about CoOL aren’t addressed now, “it’s a problem that’s not going to go away”.

“It’s one of those issues that just bubbles along, under the surface,” he said.

“Just turn on the radio, listen to talk back radio and you know people are not happy about it, so if everybody’s not happy, why don’t we do something about it.”

In the report, Mr Ramsey said the Committee was of the opinion that any country of origin food labelling regime should not present an impediment to importers and/or provide non-tariff trade protection to our industries.

“At the heart of the recommendations is that each item should have a separate reference to the ingredients and the manufacture of goods,” he said.

“It keeps the best of what is good with the Australian country of origin statements, provides some specialised language that puts some separation between food and other products in the Australian market and most importantly addresses the confusion surrounding the ‘Made in Australia’ and ‘Made in Australia from local and imported ingredients’ descriptors.”

During the inquiry, Mr Ramsey said there was “extraordinary confusion” around the terms ‘Made in Australia’, ‘Product of Australia’ and ‘Made from Australian and Imported Ingredients’ which thwarted the increasing consumer desire to buy Australian made food and produce.