Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The food-labelling regime in Australia, as in other countries, is important for a number of reasons. Labels on food and food products provide information that is critically important in relation to health and safety; in relation to preventative health in terms of diet, particularly for children; in relation to allowing consumers to make informed choices about their food and its origins; and in relation to competitive fairness when it comes to the way that food companies produce and represent their food to the market. As it stands, food labelling in Australia, which is governed by the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code in addition to state and territory fair trading laws and the Commonwealth Trade Practices Act, is a largely self-regulating system, whose requirements cover things like the provision of ingredients and nutritional information; the produce’s country of origin; the date by which a food should be eaten; and a general truth-in-labelling requirement with regard to the description of the product itself—its weight and so on.

Labels that go beyond this more-or-less raw data and that present what might be called second-order information, in that they draw a conclusion from, say, nutritional information, are perhaps best represented by the Heart Foundation’s Tick. While it is not uncommon for people to regard the heart Tick as forming part of Australia’s food labelling system, the reality is that the Heart Foundation is not a part of the government and the heart Tick is a voluntary form of health accreditation that producers choose to seek or not as it suits them, rather than being something that results from an enforced survey of all foods. That is not to take anything away from the heart Tick itself. Indeed, as a private organisation the Heart Foundation has done a fantastic job in establishing a system of great integrity when it comes to the testing and the random audit compliance for products that first seek and then receive the heart Tick.

I am not the first person to observe that the Heart Foundation’s Tick label and the process that underpins it represent an approach to food labelling that many consumers, health professionals and animal welfare advocates would like to see implemented more widely. We must acknowledge that food production, like other kinds of production, is occurring within the context of significant and rapid change and innovation. That in itself is a strong argument for ensuring that our approach to food labelling is proactive rather than reactive.

On that point, I have noted before in this place the particular importance of staying ahead of the curve in relation to food products that involve genetically modified ingredients. I am pleased to note that work is currently occurring under the auspices of Labelling and Information Standards in relation to the treatment of nutrition and health related claims. While this will, hopefully, produce better guidelines and compliance when it comes to what are called nutrient content claims and health claims, these guidelines will of course apply only where a food producer seeks to make what is inevitably a positive claim, like ‘High in calcium’ or ‘Calcium is good for healthy bones’. They will not operate to require the disclosure of what might be considered negative nutritional content or the negative health consequences of that content. Again, on this point, I would say with confidence that there is appetite in the Australian community for some guidance in relation to key nutrition and health data, and that a simple, mandated labelling scheme would likely be welcomed by the majority of people, and especially by parents.

Last year I wrote to the Food Labelling Law and Policy Review Panel in support of a submission from the Barristers Animal Welfare Panel that called for nationally mandated and legislatively defined labelling protocols to cover methods of production of animal derived products that involve very different outcomes for animals like chickens and pigs. In the case of different methods of egg production, Australian consumers have, in large numbers, demonstrated their preference for eggs from free-range chickens, and yet it was only three years ago that both the Australian Egg Corporation and the Australian free-range poultry association estimated that some 200,000 factory-farm eggs per day were being passed off as free-range eggs.

Strengthening the labelling regime in this area is not just a case of providing consumers with accurate information about production methods. It is also about protecting the financial interests of those producers who choose to farm chickens in a way that is both more humane and more costly. Such producers should not have the marketing advantage that comes with genuine free-range farming diluted by unscrupulous producers whose farming methods would horrify some consumers. The current absence of effective labelling compliance when it comes to methods of production for eggs and other animal derived products means that some producers are misleading consumers, misrepresenting their conduct when it comes to animal welfare, and having a free ride at the expense of their genuinely free-range competitors.

The rapidly occurring changes in food production methods and technology, in patterns of food consumption and in our understanding of the health and welfare consequences that flow from these, require that we continue to review the approach taken to labelling in the interests of public health, consumer choice and fair market competition.