Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A lot of Australians were quite shocked last week at the frozen berry hepatitis A scare and the infections that were happening across our community. What I am getting from this is that consumers want simple new food-labelling laws and labels that clearly state the country where the product was grown. Consumers would be happy to have this for a number of reasons, and I think consumers would be happy to pay a bit more for a product that clearly states it is Australian grown. Why? They would be doing two things. They would be supporting Australian farmers and Australian produce, but they would also be buying an insurance premium against getting sick, because our food is very clean.

The number of confirmed cases of hepatitis A is increasing and it is obviously a concern. We are bringing down a white paper which will be going to cabinet soon. I believe current food labelling is misleading and the new food labelling laws need to have much tighter control over country of origin food labelling rules. At the moment a product can say that it is made in Australia on the label but it does not necessarily contain Australian ingredients. This needs to change.