Australians have decided to play it safe with this whole ‘possibly contracting Hepatitis A from from tasty smoothies and cheesecakes’ thing – so safe, in fact, that sales of pretty much all frozen berries are in a slump.
Though the raspberries implicated in the recent Hep A outbreak came from particular factories in China, at least one grocery chain says that frozen berries from New Zealand and Chile are not moving from the shelves.
One potential upside, at least for Australian producers, is that demand for fresh, locally-sourced berries is booming, and that markets around the country are doing a roaring trade.
The bigger question is, what will the government do to make sure another outbreak like the current one does not happen? If today’s news is any indication, the answer to that is ‘the least it can get away with.’
Prime Minister Tony Abbott recently assured the nation that all Chinese-sourced berry products linked to the outbreak are being “100% safety tested” at the border, and that contaminated product is “no longer entering the supply chain.”
That’s all well and good with regards to the couple of Chinese factories linked to the outbreak, but with regards to the broader surveillance of frozen berries, nothing has changed.
Greens Senator Rachel Siewert let fly about this at a recent hearing, saying “whilst Australians continue to contract hepatitis A, it is concerning to know that there is no increased surveillance monitoring these berries as they enter the country.”
“The current regime failed in preventing the contaminated product entering the country in the first place, the Government is not moving quickly enough to prevent further potential infection.”
Under the current standards, frozen berries are categorised as a low-risk “surveillance” food, with just 5% tested at the border for pesticide contamination, and no tests for microbial contamination.
Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce has called for more rigorous testing, and has raised the need for reform with the Prime Minister; Stop The Berries memes, like this one we crudely slapped together earlier, are already a thing.
18 people have so far been diagnosed with Hepatitis A, with suspected links to Patties Foods products.
