Food Safety Practice and Food Safety Knowledge in Australia's Retail Food Businesses: Levels, Gaps and Directions for Reform

Abstract

Food safety is one of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) top ten priorities (WHO 2008). The WHO (1999a) estimates that the incidence of diarrhoeal diseases alone is 4000 million cases per year worldwide indicating serious underlying food safety problems. WHO (1999a) also advises that contaminated food contributes to 1.5 billion cases of diarrhoea in children each year, resulting in more than three million premature deaths. These food-borne deaths and illnesses are shared by both developed and developing nations (Centre for Science in the Public Interest 2005). Food poisoning remains a significant public health issue for Australia (Australia New Zealand Food Authority (ANZFA) 1996), with an estimated 4.2 million individual cases of food-borne illness in Australia per year, resulting in a total annual cost to Australia of approximately $2.7 billion per year (Queensland Health 1999; ANZFA 1999b). Unofficial estimates of the number of food-borne illness cases in Queensland in 2002 are between 1.6 million and 1.9 million cases per year.

Internationally the WHO has called for more systematic and aggressive steps to be taken to significantly reduce the risk of food-borne diseases (WHO 2008). Nationally the federal government states that the most important reason for introducing food safety reform in Australia is the need to reduce the national incidence of food-borne illness (Roche 2002). The Queensland government has adviseded that it is committed to food safety in the food supply chain from source to consumption (Queensland Health 2000). Australia’s food hygiene regulatory system costs government $18.6 million (net) to enforce and small business $337 million in compliance costs per year, and yet 11,500 consumers contract food-borne disease every day (ANZFA 1999b). Federal, state and territory governments throughout Australia have all acknowledged that this is unacceptable.

A reduction in food-borne illness of just 20% would result in an annual saving to the Australian community of over $500 million (ANZFA 1999a), as well as reducing human mortality, morbidity and suffering. To improve the safety of our food, reduce food-borne illness and to assist Australia develop a thriving food industry, the federal, state and territory governments agreed on a series of national food safety reforms (Queensland Health 2000; ANZFA 1999a). But this is not an easy task. The food industry is one of Australia’s major employers with an estimated 131,500 food businesses throughout the country and an annual retail turnover in 1996-1997 of $41 billion (Queensland Health May 1999). In Queensland there are approximately 30,000 registered food businesses (Queensland Health 2004). The majority of these are small food businesses. Owners of small food businesses face considerable challenges to be successful. To improve food safety levels, a number of challenges must be faced and overcome by the both the food industry and government at all levels...