The Australian, Entrepreneur
Importers accept the necessity of strict biosecurity measures but can find that their implementation is hard to swallow, writes Ed Charles | November 30, 2007
LAST month Melbourne-based food importer Friend & Burrell was forced to destroy 80kg of the prized Porcini mushrooms. Another exotic food importer reports that truffles — the underground fungus — were ruined because they heated up and spoiled during fumigation.
It’s all part of the bureaucracy and sometimes heavy and slow handling of valuable and delicate foods by the Australian Quarantine & Inspection Service (AQIS) and a major headache for niche fine food importers — even those who pay attention to all the minute detail of paperwork.
Earlier this month an 8000kg refrigerated airfreight container of Italian cheese, including Buffalo Mozzarella and Taleggio, was held up at Customs for wholesale distributor Kirkfood, which has offices in NSW and Victoria. Kirkfood head of imports Will Tuckfield said the paperwork was in order, with the invoice detailing the health certificate for the consignment. The frustration for Tuckfield is that Customs missed it and his paperwork went to the bottom of the pile, leading to several days’ delay.
Tuckfield respects that there have to be rules to protect the environment from biosecurity risks. It has taken him more than seven years to import one of Italy’s finest hams, San Daniele Prosciutto, albeit numbered to track its origin, abattoir and processors and with the bone removed to allay AQIS’s fears of Swine Vesicular Disease entering Australia.
“The bottom line is whatever the rules are you have to follow them,” he says. But his frustration is that there is a large gap between what is deemed acceptable in Australia and the rest of the world — Europe in particular. And most importers are too small and don’t have the resources to fight AQIS.
“The real difficulty is with the cheese meeting food standards in Australia. There was a stage when parmesan (a raw cheese) was technically illegal.”
One of the famous cases is the problem over the importation of Roquefort, a French cheese made with raw milk that can contain tiny quantities of the E-coli bacteria and was banned in Australia for a while. “The E-coli is not a particular problem in cheese in Europe. In Australia the limits are set extremely low.”
Georges Puechberty from GJ Foods in Sydney is also frustrated — not just by the bureaucracy but the cost of bringing fine foods through Customs. “It is very, very difficult because the quarantine rules are getting tighter and tighter. If quarantine had existed in Australia when the first fleet arrived, we would still be eating kangaroos and gum leaves. And nothing else.”
When Puechberty imports truffles, the European side of the operation tries to remove all dirt from them. In Australia AQIS examines them under a microscope costing $35.50 for each 15-minute time segment. Recently, it took nine of these 15-minute intervals to find a few grams of dirt. That’s less than would come in on a tourist’s shoes, according to Puechberty.
“I’m the first one to agree about being very cautious about what we import to Australia. But there is a point where we should say, ‘Look, maybe we are going a little bit overboard’,” he says.
In another case, he was importing white Alba truffles, the most exotic of all, vacuum-packed which kills insects. An AQIS officer cut in half, looking for insects, several of the truffles which cost $7500 a kilo, also cutting their value to chefs.
Another importation of 4kg of frozen truffles took 1.5 hours to laboratory test. “By then they were all thawed out,” Puechberty says. “That means we couldn’t sell them. We have been trying to recoup our money for 18 months and we are still not successful against quarantine.”
Friend & Burrell’s Simon Friend says that, primarily, Australian quarantine people are looking to ensure there is no dirt or any insects in a consignment, with fumigation costing about $400. “On one occasion they found one live insect in a fresh truffle consignment which means the whole lot gets done, which is bloody depressing. Not only does it add to the cost but it also means you lose a day or two in shelf life. Fumigation never improves the product’s integrity.”
Friend says some of the documentation can be quite complex. “After all the balls-ups that can occur with paperwork, you have the critical aspect of temperature control and cool chain logistics. If mushrooms are exposed to heat they suffer quite dramatically.”