Australian Made rejects label proposal

A renewed attempt to simplify Australia's Country of Origin (CoO) laws for food labelling has hit a snag, with the Australian Made Campaign saying it would not support the a new CoO bill proposed by the Australian Greens (packagingnews.com.au, May 17).

The chief executive of Australian Made, Ian Harrison, said the organisation would not back the new Greens proposals, introduced into parliament last week, which would reduce CoO labelling of local produce down to three main claims – Product of or Grown in Australia; Manufactured in Australia; and Packaged in Australia.

“Australian Made cannot support the bill in its current form,” Australian Made Chief Executive Ian Harrison said.

He cited inconsistency and confusion as the main reasons for the organisation's rejection of the proposal.

“The bill creates a separate and inconsistent set of country of origin labelling requirements for some food products (products partly or fully processed in Australia) as distinct from other food products (fully imported foods) and all other categories of product,” he said.

“Australian Made believes this will increase rather than reduce confusion for consumers as well as businesses, when labelling should be simple and consistent.

“Australian Made does not see the value in banning the claims ‘Australian Made’ or ‘Made in Australia’ in favour of the exactly equivalent terms ‘Australian Manufactured’ or ‘Manufactured in Australia’.”

He said the bill also did not appear to cover packaged food grown, as opposed to processed, in Australia.

“Where products cannot meet the criteria for ‘Grown in Australia’, ‘Product of Australia’ or ‘Manufactured in Australia’, the bill proposes only one allowable claim – ‘Packaged in Australia’,” Harrison said.

“Australian Made believes that a wider range of alternative claims should be allowable for products such as pickles processed in Australia from imported vegetables.”

He also said Australian Made did not support the use of qualified claims such as ‘Made in Australia from imported and local ingredients’.

The opposition to the bill threatens to further derail long-running attempts to simplify Australia's CoO laws.

A meeting of federal, state and New Zealand ministers last year deferred a decision on the issue in favour of continued community and industry consultation.

In April this year, a senate committee rejected an initial attempt by the Australian Greens to introduce legislation to resolve the matter. Last week Greens leader Christine Milne introduced the latest bill in hopes of reaching consensus and resolving the matter.