Seafood News - Industry Events - Seafood Market

Sydney Morning HeraldAustralian News    27/11/2004 08:48:28

Kirsty Needham

The food industry has backed a consumer logo denoting Australian HomeGrown products to be applied to fresh, delicatessen and packaged food in supermarkets and promoted with a $10 million awareness campaign.

This comes as supermarkets are increasingly buying food from overseas to cut prices, and stock shelves with house-brand labels.

The organisers said 56 industry groups supported the scheme, which will begin in January.

"Research has identified that Australians generally assume all produce found in supermarket delis and fresh sections is Australian-grown," said the executive officer of Australian HomeGrown, Marcus Elgin. "When they discover the truth, that much of what they purchase and consume is imported, they express alarm." Most fresh produce was not labelled as imported, he said.

The Federal Government has pledged $4 million to the scheme, which will licence and audit companies using the logo to ensure only local ingredients are used.

The executive director of the Australian Prawn Farmers Association, Martin Breen, said local prawn farmers could not compete with cheap prawns from China, the "vast majority" of which were sold in Coles and Woolworths.

Imports had surged 200 per cent since 2001, with a kilogram of prawns costing $3 to $4 to harvest in China and Thailand, compared with $9 to $11 here.

"The labelling integrity in seafood is nowhere near the integrity of packaged food," Mr Breen said.

Pork imports rose 42 per cent in 2002 and made up nearly half of pork sold, compared with 4 per cent four years ago. The pork industry first proposed the HomeGrown mark.

"It is important for consumers to be able to differentiate," said Nigel Garrard, the managing director of the tinned fruit company SPC Ardmona. "It is confusing, as there are more imported products on supermarket shelves than ever before."

The president of the Canned Fruits Industry Council of Australia, Ivan Routley, said the industry feared the trend for supermarket house-brands to replace local fruit with imports.

"They are looking for cheaper prices. They claim they prefer Australian product, but when it comes to price they don't."

The history of other "made in Australia" campaigns had shown consumer nationalism in surveys had not translated into dollars, Mr Elgin admitted. The HomeGrown logo was not designed to give Australian products a price premium but to promote their safety and quality standards, he said.

Coles and Woolworths declined to comment.