Rural journalist warns of imported food 'nightmare'

Science journalist Julian Cribb argues that a lack of testing on imported food products is putting people's health at risk (Eloise Fuss - ABC)

 By Eloise Fuss 

 Author and science journalist Julian Cribb says Australians shouldn't just be worried about a looming global food crisis. He spoke on SA Late Afternoons this week about Australia's food perils, ranging from the loss of prime agricultural land, through to claims about cancerous chemicals present in supermarkets' imported foods.

 

 

Since releasing a book about 'The Coming Famine' in 2010, Julian Cribb has continued to fiercely advocate for Australia's agriculture industry.

Speaking with presenter Annette Marner, he argued that agriculture in Australia has been 'abandoned', with enormous amounts of farmers leaving the lands, the investment into agricultural science and technology 'savaged', and a large cutting back of state agricultural departments like CSIRO.
"When I started reporting in agricultural journalism there were 19,000 dairy farmers in Australia, today there are less than 3000 and they're still leaving, so how many are we going to have left in 20 years time?"
He says this decline, combined with the supermarkets increasing reliance on imported foods, is making Australia's food supply increasingly insecure.
"Between 1/4 and a 1/3 of our fresh fruits and vegetables are coming from overseas now and a lot of them are coming from China. It's a crazy situation, the Chinese have got a food problem of their own but they're exporting food to Australia."
He argues this is not just problematic for Australians into the future, but right now, saying a lack of testing for chemicals on imported food products is putting people's health at risk.
"You can walk into any supermarket around Australia and you'll find a whole range of imported food, they haven't been checked, you don't know what's in them.
"We know from American and European surveys that there are a lot of pesticides and various chemicals in the food, and not just from the food itself but also from the wrapping and things like that."
He says many supermarket foods are grown in countries where farmers are not as educated in safe agriculture practices, increasing the risk of food product contamination.
"If you grow it in these third world countries no-one is teaching the farmers how to use the chemicals properly, they're not like our farmers who have been educated in these things.
"They are used badly, they are sloppy, they often overspray because they think more is better, there's no inspections, there are no ag departments helping them to use chemicals wisely- so the stuff that's coming in is a bit of a nightmare."
He used fish as an example, saying that consumers are not aware they could be receiving toxins from this imported seafood.
"We import into Australia 85% of our fish which is ridiculous in a country with the world's second largest ocean zone, and that fish is usually heavily contaminated with things like mercury, cadmium, heavy metals, because it's grown with very very dirty water, in Asia usually.
"All the good quality Australian fish that gets sold overseas demands a nice fine price of course but our consumers are not getting it. We're getting the b-grade stuff that's heavily contaminated and nobody in government cares, the policy is to let people get cancer and then cure it." 

Origin information: ABC North and West SA