China foods on the rise

Reporter: Helen Wellings
Broadcast Date: September 17, 2009

Tonight it's likely you're eating imported food, probably from what's become the world's food factory - China.

Most of the time we don't even realise its origin, how it's been grown and how safe it is. But our supermarkets are increasingly turning away from our local home-grown products in favour of the profitable alternative: products from China.

John Cobb, Federal Opposition spokesman for Agriculture: "Coles and Woolworths wants to sell the most at the cheapest price. Australia produces the best, not always the cheapest, but it produces the best. China always produces the cheapest. China, and all their health scares it has given us, is overtaking Australian produce on our supermarket shelves."

Last year, imports of Chinese vegetables soared by 35%, nudging our own home-grown products off the shelves.

Here's some of what's poured in from China over 12 months.

Peas; 2,400 tonnes, beans; 5,000 tonnes, asparagus; 1,600 tonnes, mushrooms; 4,600 tonnes, frozen vegetables and vegie mixes almost 20,000 tonnes, fresh onions and shallots; 810 tonnes, fresh garlic - China supplies more than 90% of our market - 8,500 tonnes a year. It's bleached white to make it look more appealing.

Tasmanian farmer, Mike Badcock, of Sustainable Agricultural Communities Australia, says China's virtually taken over our frozen and processed vegetable market.

"4 years ago the whole of vegetables was about $19 million, this year there is $110 million worth of vegetables being imported from China into Australia," Badcock said.

Australia is now importing up to 35 tonnes a month of China's cheap apples and pears (and fruit juices), while our farmers are tossing out and giving up.

"We just can't survive. What is happening is the imported product might be imported cheaper but at the end of the day it is being sold at the same price as what the Australian product is being sold for," Badcock said.

Fifth generation market gardener, Jeff McSpedden says we may soon be left without a food industry.

"It starts out cheap but it can actually creep up and we're out of business, then Australia would have to pay what ever the price is."

The US government stated that it regularly refused entry to Chinese food on the basis of toxic chemicals, drug residues, unsafe manufacture and filth.

Last year we unearthed secret government tests revealing the Chinese foods we eat (like garlic, onions, peas, nuts and cabbage), contained dangerous pesticides, banned cancer-causing chemicals and poisonous lead and cadmium (up to hundreds of times more than the legal limit). Also detected was e.coli bacteria from Chinese farmers using human and animal faeces as fertilizer.

"Twelve months ago there was an incredible scare about a thing called Melamine which was an additive put into Chinese milk... some of that came through in dry product, babies milk, and this did cause the death of a lot of babies in China. With that sort of record we have to have to be extraordinarily careful," Cobb said.

Chinese beef is banned in Australia because of fatal mad cow disease. Yet a list of imports, recorded by our Quarantine Inspection Services, clearly shows almost 9 tonnes of frozen beef burgers landed in Australia from China this year.

"This is outrageous. It is totally beyond belief that Chinese Hamburger beef could land on our docks let alone be passed and come in," Cobb said.

Agriculture Minister, Tony Burke, now says it was a mistake, that AQIS incorrectly recorded the beef coming from China, instead of New Zealand.

"Let's hope it hasn't come via China and been processed in China - we could be at risk of mad cow disease, from rhindapest, from foot and mouth disease," Cobb said.

Nick Moore, of the Prawn Farmers Association, says in just 7 years, Chinese seafood imports have increased 20 fold.

"Up to 80% of seafood in Australia is imported, certainly more than 50% of prawns are imported into Australia. China's got over 8,000 tonnes coming in each year currently which is more than double the Australian farm prawn production."

But over the past years tests on Asian seafood reveal high levels of e.coli from animal and human waste, deadly carcinogens and powerful illegal antibiotics. Now the biggest worry, importing devastating viral diseases from Asia into Australia.

"If the disease gets to Australia then obviously by the time we find out, it is too late... for instance white spot is the word on most people's lists that will devastate an industry if it gets into it and it has devastated every other country so far bar none that it has actually got involved in," Moore said.

These products with our flag and other Australian symbols look like they're true blue locals - but they're from China and other overseas countries.

Lynne Wilkinson of Ausbuy, which stands for Australian made and owned products like these, says our labelling laws must be scrapped.

"Made in Australia under labelling laws means that just 51% of the wholesale cost of the goods are in that product, that may mean just the tin and the label, that doesn't necessarily mean the food in the tin," Wilkinson said.

Conveniently for China and the supermarkets, it's often impossible to tell where food comes from - it's made harder with labels boasting the line 'made from imported and local ingredients'.

"If the word imported comes first, it means it's made mainly from imported ingredients and the percentage of Australian might be 2%, 5% you wouldn't know. It could be as little as that, yes," Wilkinson said.

In the United States, any food manufacturer has to apply to the government for a licence to use the stars and stripes on their product.