Media Release

KAP Leader and Federal Member for Kennedy Bob Katter today labelled the Government’s proposed changes to food labelling, which involve road-testing six designs ranging from a pie chart to a gauge with the Australian Made kangaroo logo, as useful as mammary glands on a bull.

“It won’t make the slightest difference to sales in the supermarkets, it will simply add a needless cost structure,” Mr Katter said.

“For heaven’s sake we need to warn people about products coming in from overseas, we have asked continually for a warning label on imported foods.

“The prawns and fish that are coming in from overseas farms are choc-a-block with bacteria as most of the rivers in South East Asia have raw sewerage running into them, that water is then put into the farm ponds.

“To counter that the prawns and fish are fed masses of antibiotics, but there’s no warning at all that’s the case.

“We’ve had two outbreaks of disease, yet these labels don’t come to grips with the disease issue at all.

“And they don’t come to grips with the fact that we have health and hygiene requirements that Australian producers have to meet that our overseas competitors don’t have to meet.”

In April 2015 Mr Katter introduced the Imported Food Warning Labels Bill 2015 into Federal Parliament, which seeks that all imported food products carry the label:

“Warning: Imported food. This food has not been grown or processed under Australian health and hygiene standards and may be injurious to your health.”

Mr Katter said today that most people were not aware of just how harmful imported food products could be and the Government’s proposed labelling did not address that situation.

“These labelling changes don’t deliver an outcome at all, people will continue to eat foreign products that they don’t know may be dangerous to their health.

“This is as useful as mammary glands on a bull,” Mr Katter said.