Tony Abbott has rejected a complete crackdown on food testing and labelling in response to the hepatitis A outbreak from imported berries, saying it was the responsibility of business “not to poison their customers”.



But the Liberal MP for Murray, Sharman Stone, who fought for the Australian fruit processor SPC Ardmona, called the outbreak a “wake-up call” for Australia and urged her government to implement stronger action to stop future outbreaks.

Stone said Australia’s food regulations had a “double standard” for local and overseas producers. She called for transparent country-of-origin labelling and more rigorous food testing for imported goods to meet national standards.



The agriculture minister, Barnaby Joyce, said the government was considering a review of testing on imports under Food Standards Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ) as another case of hepatitis A was discovered, the first in Western Australia. His department wrote to the Chinese government to ask for assurances on the food testing measures.

Raspberries appear to be a potential common link in the imported fruit contamination. Eleven Australians have now been diagnosed with hepatitis A, apparently as a result of eating the frozen fruit.

WA Health’s epidemiologist, Dr Gary Dowse, announced the latest case on Wednesday, saying he expected more could arise.

“We now have a person in WA who has hepatitis A and clearly is linked to the consumption of these berries,” he said.

But the prime minister said he had to respect people’s “financial health as well as other aspects of their health”.

“The bottom line is that companies shouldn’t poison their customers,” he said. “Businesses have an obligation to do the right thing by their customers. They have an obligation to ensure the product they sell is safe, and obviously in some cases that hasn’t been the case.

“We are certainly looking at what we can do to toughen up screening but we also need to look to business to lift its game here.”

Abbott said he was aware of the labelling issue as he had checked his fridge and pantry and was surprised at how many items were marked as having Australian and imported ingredients.

However, he said reputable businesses would not want to sell products that made people sick and additional regulations would increase prices for food “unreasonably”.

“The last thing I want to do is put a whole lot of additional requirements on business that will make their life very, very difficult and will raise unreasonably prices to consumers because everything we do in this area has a cost.”

Asked if he was prepared to “allow more Australians to get sick” in order not to impose more costs on business, Abbott said: “No, we will do our job.”

But Stone contradicted Abbott, calling for products to be much better tested when they enter the country.

Stone said food regulators should be required to frequently test products, enforce faster recalls and include country-of-origin labelling. It was vital the contaminated food products were disposed of properly, rather than “just being dumped in a landfill”.

“All [regulators] currently do is test the first five samples of a product and companies know that and just make sure the first batches are clean,” she said.

“This is a wake-up call for Australia. This involves fecal contamination from water or food grown in contaminated soil and water. Meanwhile Australian growers have to adhere to scrupulous regulations and inspections. We have an incredible double standard.”

She said the campaign to save SPC Ardmona as an Australian food processor showed that it was a “furphy” that Australian consumers would not pay more for quality homegrown food.

“It is a myth that Australians always go for the cheapest price. They are sophisticated when they have full access to the information,” she said.

“We should not be giving an imported food company a holiday on testing – it has to be highly likely that a product will be checked.”

Food Standards Australia and New Zealand determine whether a product is high- or low-risk before making a recommendation to the Department of Agriculture. All high-risk products are tested but only 5% of low-risk ones are.

Joyce said low-risk products were “predominantly” tested for cadmium.

“If there is a reason for something to go from low-risk to high-risk then the health ministers get together and change the requirements for that and increase the surveillance that they ask the Department of Agriculture then to undertake,” he said.

“I want to make sure that people can clearly identify when I go to the shop an Australian, a genuine Australian product, because we do have stronger sanitary laws, we do have stronger oversight to make sure we have a cleaner, greener product than what comes in from overseas.”

The Greens leader, Christine Milne, introduced a food labelling bill to parliament last week which would ensure labels listed where the product was grown, where it was manufactured and where it was packaged.

“We have people being diagnosed with hepatitis A from eating contaminated imported food, and we have people saying they don’t know how to tell if they’re buying Australian food. Let’s fix the system,” said Milne.