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Safe Foods
The Greens are campaigning for better protection for consumers against unsafe foods. This includes calling on Food Standards Australia & New Zealand (FSANZ) to ban the use of certain food colourings and provide better protection from dodgy imported foods, pressuring the NSW government to provide more information on restaurant health inspections, and arguing for junk food ad bans on television during prime children's viewing times.
Food Colouring
Slushies, flavoured milk and chocolate muffins are approved for sale in school canteens, despite containing food colourings that are proven to contribute to hyperactivity disorders.
Canteen organisations have been let down by the nation's food regulator and the state and federal ministers who control it. For too long canteens have relied on advice and codes coming from Food Standards Australian and New Zealand (FSANZ), who have refused to take action on these dangerous food colourings.
In Europe and the USA, the six bright artificial dyes are banned, being phased out or at least provide warning labels, not just in schools but across the community. In Australia the nation's food ministers continue to hide behind FSANZ to excuse their negligent inaction and ignore the scientific evidence.
NSW Minister Ian Macdonald is busy ignoring the issue while children are arcing up in schools where these products are available at the canteen.
Food Hygiene Inspections
The Greens are calling for urgent action to protect NSW restaurant customers from food poisoning.
Salmonella is booming and changes to the way restaurant operators are regulated and to hygiene monitoring and compliance are needed.
The state government must provide councils and other food inspection authorities with the resources to inspect all restaurants on a regular basis and the powers to prosecute those that infringe the basic standards. It is time to publish the results of food inspections.
For details of better inspection and reporting practice in other countries, click here.
Testing of Imported Food
The US Food and Drug Administration revealed that some Chinese farm-raised seafood including prawns contained dangerous and banned antibiotics such as nitrofurans and malachite green. While the US tests every batch of imported Chinese farm-raised seafood, Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) tests just one in twenty batches.
The Greens want NSW Ministers who are on the Ministerial Council that sets food safety policy for FSANZ to make sure that comprehensive testing is implemented to protect consumers.
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