Weekly Times: One year on from Australia’s frozen berry food safety scare, producers are working harder than ever to make sure the food they produce is safe to eat. Frozen berries from China were thought to have caused at least 31 cases of hepatitis A across Australia last February. But last year The Weekly Times revealed Australia was not blameless on food poisoning, with dozens of E. coli, Salmonella and Norovirus incidents in the past 10 years caused by food produced on home soil through untreated water, ineffective use of disinfectants and a lack of adherence to food safety programs.

CSIRO food microbiologist Cathy Moir said if something did go wrong in modern food supply chains, the large scale of operations and the widespread distribution of their products meant the problem could affect the whole country. [Cathy] Moir said protocols had shifted away from food testing and toward preventing contamination in the past 10 years. “If you test food, you can only guarantee it’s safe if you test 100 per cent of the product.

Read the full article at The Weekly Times website.