Federal Member for Hume Angus Taylor has called for community feedback on proposed new food labels.

He said an online survey had opened this week allowing everyone to have their say on clearer country of origin food labelling: http://www.industry.gov.au/industry/IndustrySectors/FoodManufacturingIndustry/Pages/Country-of-Origin-Labelling.aspx

“The challenge with food labelling is that if you make it too detailed, the cost of the food item needs to go up to pay for that detailed labelling. The real focus here is on getting the balance right between having enough detail for consumers to know what they’re buying, but on the other hand not raising the cost of food.”

Mr Taylor said as long as labelling remained on the packaging of the food and not in electronic form, the information would need to be simple and short.

“As the push for more fresh food increases, in many, many food products, the ingredients actually change over the course of the year. If food manufacturers were to be accurate with their labelling, they’d need to change the labels weekly. This would be a prohibitive cost.

“If we are going for a simple label to put on the package, it will never be perfect, so we have to find the best way. Cost is one way of measuring the different ingredients, weight would be the other way.

“But Australians don’t want to pay a lot for their food, so the answer is not in more detailed and expensive food labelling, the ultimate answer is electronic labelling. You just scan the product and the detail will come up on your smartphone.

“My own view is that in time, as more and more people get used to using smart phones – and it’s already a fair proportion of the population which does – we will be able to use electronic labelling which will give us the very detailed information that lots of people want.”

Mr Taylor said the online survey, published on the Department of Industry’s website, was open until Friday 3 July 2015.