Imported food contamination

Some imported vegetables may be so contaminated they could make consumers sick. Food experts want new standards and clearer labelling.

Food experts have warned that imported vegetables from certain countries, such as China, Vietnam, Thailand and India, may pose a public health risk.

Food Safety Consultant and former Chief Food Inspector with the Health Department, Des Sibraa, said many consumers would not eat the products if they knew the level of contamination.

Despite lower food standards in some other countries, more cheap imported vegetables than ever have flooded into Australia in the last two years:

• frozen vegetable mixes have shot up 90 per cent,

* processed potatoes up 150 per cent,
* capsicum a 75 per cent increase.
* Garlic - now 95 per cent in our shops is imported - mostly from China;
* asparagus, around 50 per cent is imported,
* green peas 25 per cent,

* onions and shallots from China 20 per cent are imported.

We bring into Australia $100 million worth of imports per year, according to Euan Laird of the Australian Vegetable and Potato Growers' Federation, AusVeg.

"What we're facing now is a whole new potential threat that we haven't exposed before," Mr Laird said.

"The conditions in which this produce is grown overseas is not equivalent to our standards. It's in polluted water, with septic systems not to our standards. It's a danger to our society."

Tests on imports

The latest tests commissioned by AusVeg on a range of vegetables from China showed disturbing levels of contamination from the potentially deadly E coli.

"E coli makes you sick," Mr Laird said. "E coli means human or animal faeces, so if you have food coming into this country with E coli on it, it means that food has come into contact with human or animal faeces."

"Who would want to eat that kind of food?"

Test results were as follows:

• Baby corn from China: tests found an alarming 240 E coli microbials per gram, a total of 8.5 million through the corn. The acceptable level is zero.

* Snow peas: 110 per gram, the acceptable level is zero.
* Sugar peas: 400 E coli, The level should be zero.

* Garlic and frozen cauliflower: lower, but more than 3 E.coli per gram. Again, the acceptable level is zero.

"It's very surprising because there should be absolutely none of those organisms," Mr Sibraa said.

Aussie-grown vegies invariably showed no E coli contamination, Mr Sibraa said. But eating these contaminated imports uncooked posed a real danger.

"Because you could end up with haemolytic-ureamic syndrome, which causes your kidneys to collapse and you could die, or at least be on dialysis," he said.

"People who are very young or very old and the infirm, or people whose immune system is compromised, are in grave danger if they eat that product raw."

The microbials were killed if the vegetables were washed and cooked properly. But the problem occurred with many types of vegetables which were eaten raw or par-cooked.

Farming practices

Earlier this year, Today Tonight revealed shocking farming practices in certain countries, such as Thailand, India and China. Dangerous chemicals such as DDT and Deildren, banned in Australia decades ago, were being used on vegetable crops.

Tests on dried foods imported into Australia showed 16 out of 50 (one in three) had carcinogenic residues.

"Yet we allow products to come into this country that contain these chemicals," Mr Laird said. "It's just not good enough."

In China, untreated animal waste and human excrement from nearby toilet blocks were being used as fertiliser on hectares of vegetables, including cauliflower, celery, cabbages, snow peas, corn. These vegetables were grown for export to many countries, including Australia.

"The whole area of China seems to be a disaster looking for somewhere to happen," Mr Sibraa said. "The hygiene is not very good for a start, nobody's really checking it. They pretend they are but they are not."

"And the use of human faeces to cultivate crops is just beyond anyone's comprehension."

Professor Collignon urged far tougher standards for imports.

"The trouble at the moment is, trade seems to outweigh public health and we need to make sure public health has pre-eminence rather than money," declares infectious diseases physician, Professor Collignon.

He warned that some bugs on these foods were antibiotic-resistant.

"We need higher testing levels on importing foods than we do for our own food," Professor Collignon said. "And we need to, in fact, have extra standards produced, because antibotic resistance in bacteria is a major issue and there's no way that's even tested for currently."

When vegetables came into Australia, they were not routinely tested.

"It is ridiculous that the Australian government does not test imported produce for microbial contamination," Mr Laird said. "At the moment, fresh produce can come into Australia with no testing looking at E.coli levels at all.

"And that is just a national disgrace."

"Country of origin" labels

An AusVeg survey showed 97 per cent of people wanted to know the country of origin on the products they buy.

But most of those surveyed said they often could not tell from labels where the food was grown. AusVeg said that under proposed new labelling laws, that would not change.

The labels allowed were as follows:
* "Product of Australia" meant it was grown in Australia.
* The label "Made from imported and local ingredients" did not tell consumers how much was imported and from where.

* "Made in Australia" or say, "Made in Italy" could mean the food was not from those countries at all. It might have been just packaged there.

The new Country of Origin labelling proposals just released by Food Standards Australia and New Zealand would still allow these labels.

"So you could have imported tomatoes under the label, "Made in Australia"," Mr Laird said.

For years, tomatoes grown in China and packaged in Italy had been labelled "Made in Italy", Mr Laird claimed.

AusVeg has called for labels that tell consumers exactly which country products came from, along with the percentage.