Back door food imports

Bad news for Australians imported toxic frost products from New Zealand

Souerce: Yahoo 7 news

                                  Avocadoes.photo: Getty

Fears for avocado industry

Growers say supermarkets have taken away the consumers' rights to buy Aussie products by only stocking imports.

New Zealand has become the back door for Asian produce to get here, and the process is raising further concerns for the health of Australian shoppers and farmers.

We hate losing to them on the sporting field, but when it comes to business there's no competition, and we're copping a hammering.

Now, thanks to a loosening of quarantine laws, the Kiwis are enjoying a free kick.
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• Meat import fears
• Country of origin aisles
• Anything but Australian made

Apple growers can expect a $130 million hit this year, thanks to food imports from China and New Zealand.

Now avocados growers are facing oblivion thanks to cheaper Kiwi imports, and our major grocery chains turning their backs on Australian farmers.

New South Wales avocado grower Christina Culross’ livelihood is on the line thanks to the obsession of grocery chains to keep dropping prices.

                               Australia’s best grocers

She's calling on the public to reject the imported Kiwi avocados and send a message to Government and supermarkets.

According to Culross, in two weeks’ time, every supermarket in the eastern states would have switched to New Zealand fruit. “We're still picking for the next few weeks, and there are plenty of other growers in New South Wales who will be picking until Christmas,” she said.

“So to put it in perspective ... this year is a bumper crop for us. We hope to produce 90,000 trays of avocados and New Zealand are exporting three million trays to Australia between September and January, so we are up against a tsunami of avocados.”

Today Tonight's latest food stories
Ausbuy’s Lynne Wilkinson says Australian consumers are being duped, and calls on all the supermarket chains to be upfront and declare the real reasons they're stocking New Zealand avocados instead of home-grown varieties.

“These imports are coming in when our dollar is high, so they're cheap, they're probably subsidised by their own Governments, and the consumer is not necessarily going to get the benefit. The retailer is probably going to take the profit difference between buying an Australian good and a cheap import,” Wilkinson said.

“There seems to be a lot of food coming in from New Zealand (but) New Zealand doesn't actually grow as much as is coming out of it. Our manufacturers (like Heinz and McCains) have closed here, to open factories there. So they're no longer sourcing from our farmers, they're sourcing from New Zealand, or the product is coming in from China and being processed to New Zealand.”

Two thirds of the frozen vegetables in fridges are now sourced from foreign investors.

Coles claims to be stocking avocados in their Western Australia and South Australia stores but due to supply shortages they have to import New Zealand avocados. Woolworths claim to stock avocados in their South Australia, Western Australia, Northern Territory and Queensland stores.
Not good enough, says Ausbuy.
Response statements

• Woolworths:

100 per cent of fresh meat and 97 per cent of fresh fruit and vegetables sold in Woolworths is Australian grown. We only import produce when we cannot get the supply domestically, usually when produce is out of season in Australia. An example of this is that lemons are in demand all year round but we are not able to get supply from Australia all year so in the 'off season' we source lemons from overseas.

When it comes to private label grocery products our preference is to use Australian suppliers and to only import private label products where a domestic supplier does not tender, we cannot get the quality or supply at home or secure products at a price that our customers would be willing to pay.

Traditionally, the domestic avocado season runs from May to October during which time 100 per cent of fruit stocked at Woolworths comes from Australia. As Australian supplies reduce we usually begin switching to NZ avocadoes, however, this year our growers underestimated supply and had a surplus of fruit on the market.

We have sent the remaining stock of domestically grown avocadoes (including some of the surplus fruit) to Woolies stores in Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and the NT. As such, we are the only major retailer to be currently supplying Australian avocadoes to Queenslanders.

• Coles:

Coles has an Australian-first sourcing policy, and about 96 per cent of all the fresh produce we sell is Australian.

Contrary to the implication in your second question (How many of your private label products were once sourced from Australian farmers, and now are imported from overseas?), we are not increasing imports, of either fresh produce or packaged private label product – quite the opposite. In fresh produce, we have an import replacement program, where we work with Australian growers to extend local growing seasons, reducing the need to import fresh produce. I’ve attached some case studies for further information.

In the case of packaged private label products, the attached press release outlines the fact that Coles brand has more products with the Australian Made logo than any other brand. We are also the only Australian supermarket to offer a private label Australian Grown frozen vegie range.

Our avocado sourcing this year is no different to previous years. We are currently sourcing Australian avocados for all our WA and SA stores (sourced from within those two states respectively). From March to September, we source avocados for all Coles stores from Bundaberg in Queensland. Between September and February, we are not able to source sufficient commercial quantities of Australian avocados, and so fruit is sourced from New Zealand during this period. We’ve had conversations with Avocados Australia to look at opportunities to source even more Australian avocados in the future.

Bottled water industry

Resourse: Yahoo7 News

Australians spent more than half a billion dollars on bottled water last year, but was it worth it?

We all know that drinking water is good for you, and plenty of us are happy to pay for it.

Bottled water is promoted as being fresh and free of impurities, but just how true are those claims?
A growing campaign is trying to stop the flow of the bottled water industry.

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• Lifting the lid on bottled water
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The mouth-watering $60 billion bottled water industry turns over more than half a billion dollars in Australia alone.

In fact we drink 700 million litres of bottled water each year.

Jon Dee from Do Something is an active campaigner against bottled water. “It would cost them less than a cent to get the water out of the ground, and yet you're paying $2.50 to $3 a litre, or more for bottled water. That's twice the price of petrol."

According to Geoff Parker from the Australasian Bottled Water Institute, when it comes to bottled water, it’s all about convenience. “Our research shows the number one reason why people buy bottled water is for convenience."

Convenient? Sure. But is bottled water any healthier than what we can get out of the tap?
Today Tonight commissioned two independent labs to analyse seven unidentified samples. Six were high-selling bottled waters, and the other everyday tap water.

The lab tested for:

• mineral content
• sodium
• potassium
• magnesium
• chloride
• sulphate
• phosphate
• flouride

The second lab looked at contaminants and bacteria.
The results were surprising.

Tap water had lower sodium levels than some of big name brands, and slightly high levels of calcium. Otherwise there was hardly any difference, and no major signs of contamination.

On a country paddock, outside Wagga Wagga, at Big Springs water well, liquid gold bubbles to the surface. In this area spring water is just a couple of metres below the ground, and the water is so clean it's ready-made to be mined and pumped.

Big springs has been used by settlers for almost 200 years, but has sold to the public for the just twenty.

 “We consume about five per cent of the well’s capacity. so there's an abundance that flows further down into the creek system," Big Springs’ Greg Hanson said.

Greg Hanson and his partner Pat Wilson run Big Springs. He water is pumped from the well by a simple system, similar to a pool pump. Every day Wilson loads it into a 25 thousand litre tanker.
In this fast turn-around business, it’s “48 hours from the ground to the table," Wilson said.

The tankers unload at the company's $1 million dollar processing plant. Most of the business for Big Springs is in big bottles for offices, and some smaller water bottles.

“The water is filted to 0.2 of a micron, and then we sanitise it,” Hanson explained.

The water costs 50 cents to a dollar a litre to produce. Outside this factory the price can rise five times.
“Unfortunately for us it gets marked up a lot after it leaves our manufacturing plant. And I think some cafes sell if for what they think they can get for it, rather than say ‘I'm only going to put 100 per cent on this," Wilson said.

Canberra University has become the first university in the world to ban bottled water sales. Vice Chancellor Professor Stephen Parker says “I think we're the largest community where there's no bottled water available for purchase."

“We couldn't see the case for selling bottled water in circumstances where you’ve got freely available tap water. So we discontinued the sale of all bottled water on campus," he explained.

140,000 water bottles used to be sold here. These have now been replaced with free water bubblers and low- cost flavoured and chilled water dispensers.

Up the road from the University is Bundanoon - the first town in the world to ban bottled water sales, replacing them with tap water.

Parker however is critical of bans, on health grounds, and says “UK research shows that once you remove bottled water as a sale option, 75 per cent of people will move to higher calory options."

Sales of bottled water have plateaued in the past year, as communities, schools, and governments consider ditching bottled water for everyday tap water, or for filtered options.

“At the end of the day it's water in a plastic bottle with a little label. Bottled water is undoubtedly a total rip off and Australians need to wise up to that scam. We have some of the best tap water in the world, and it's about time we starting drinking it," Dee concluded.