What you need to know
- The Australian Government has passed the Criminal Code Amendment (Food Contamination) Bill 2018 which increased the maximum penalty for food contamination offences as well as creating new offences regarding goods contamination and sabotage.
- The Minister for Health has requested that Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) issue a report on the tampering of Australian strawberries and identifying key areas for improvement.
- FSANZ will convene a joint debrief with food regulatory agencies, industry stakeholders and police later this year to confirm the systemic changes required. This feedback will then be provided to the Government.
What you need to do
- This incident provides a useful reminder to review and, if necessary, update quality assurance and food safety mechanisms within a business.
- There may also be opportunities to provide feedback to the FSANZ or the Government on the operation of food incident protocols.
- Those in the industry should also monitor the feedback provided by the FSANZ and whether that is implemented by the Government.
Background
In September 2018, there was outrage across Australia with the discovery of sewing needles inside Australian strawberries. By the end of September there were over 200 national reports with the widespread publicity resulting in many "copycat" events across the country.
Immediate response from the Government
Food regulatory agencies and the Government (both state and federal) responded by naming brands associated with the incident to the media and removing credibly linked brands from sale. The communications were coordinated between regulatory agencies through the Bi-national Food Safety Network, which is made up of FSANZ, Department of Health, the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources and the food regulatory agencies of all Australian states and territories and New Zealand. Further interim measures were implemented requiring exporters to provide evidence that strawberries were free from metal contamination, for example providing evidence of compulsory screening of all strawberries through metal detectors either at the end point of sale or on the farm.
During the height of the crisis, the Federal Government passed the Criminal Code Amendment (Food Contamination) Bill 2018. These amendments increased the maximum penalties for the offences of contaminating goods, threatening to contaminate goods and making false statements about contaminating goods from 10 to 15 years' imprisonment. The Bill also created new offences where a person recklessly contaminates goods, threatens to contaminate goods or makes a false statement about contaminating goods.
The laws applying to the sabotage of public infrastructure were also expanded to cover sabotage of Australia's food supply where such conduct is intended to prejudice national security or is reckless as to national security. The maximum penalties for these offences is between 7 and 25 years' imprisonment.
Further investigation
In addition to the steps already taken by the Federal Government, the FSANZ was asked to investigate the incident. A report to government, Strawberry tampering incident was released in October 2019. The report summarises the measures taken in response to the incident, identifies issues around supply chain vulnerability, response procedures and communications, and makes recommendations to improve these current arrangements.
The FSANZ made the following recommendations:
- All jurisdictions should review their food incident response protocols so as to ensure regulators, health departments and police are all formally linked for incidents involving intentional contamination.
- When a food tampering incident occurs across jurisdictions, a central agency should be engaged to ensure national coordination of messaging and information associated with the incident.
- Police should be included in national food incident debriefs when intentional food tampering is involved.
- Triggers for activation and management of intentional contamination of food under the National Food Incident Response Protocol (NFIRP) should be reviewed by the food regulatory system.
- A representative body for the horticulture industry is required to support crisis preparedness and response in the sector.
- Traceability measures within the horticulture sector need to be strengthened. Government and industry should work together to map the current state of play and identify options and tools for enhancing traceability along the supply chain.
- Work on traceability should include collaboration with research bodies and other stakeholders to evaluate technical and innovative solutions to improve quality assurance throughout the supply chain.
The report by FSANZ revealed that there were significant supply chain vulnerabilities in the horticulture industry such as lack of traceability, which is compounded by the lack of regulatory requirements and industry oversight. For example, effective traceability along supply chains is impacted by the lack of regulatory requirements for business notification/registration which makes it difficult to locate farms and suppliers. Furthermore, incorrect or inconsistent terminology used by public and regulatory agencies in the media created consumer concern around product recall. Therefore, FSANZ stated that centralising incident coordination and creating national communication protocols within the industry is essential for maintaining consistent information streams to the public and effectively managing media coverage, particularly due to the increased power of social media to exacerbate ongoing tampering incidents.
It is expected that the FSANZ will convene a joint debrief of the strawberry tampering incident in the first half of 2019. Following this, a report will be provided to the Government. So there should be more news to come on this issue this year.
Authors: Nina Fitzgerald, Partner; and Harriet Forster, Graduate.
