Of course we mean Country of Origin Labelling, that ever so CoOL (ha, we did it again, get it?!) niche area of product labelling law.
The federal government would like more information displayed on products made in Australia, and has proposed a new system to make it happen.
There are already a whole bunch of rules which regulate food origin labelling, including the Australian Consumer Law (companies must not label food in a way that may mislead or deceive consumers as to their origin) and the food standards code (which requires origin labelling for some packaged and unpackaged products). But, says the government, we want more!
The new system will require Australian made products to carry a country of origin symbol (the Kangaroo logo) and a bar graph which shows the amount of Aussie ingredients in the product. If a product made in Australia contains 50% Australian ingredients it will display the kangaroo logo with a bar graph half full, along with some wording to that effect.
As for foreign muck, if products include imported ingredients the country of origin of those ingredients doesn't need to be marked – but we think it would be handy to flag this, voluntarily.
We expect the changes to take effect in mid-2016 (dependent on some further consideration by the government), so hopefully we'll know exactly how much Aussie goodness we're munching on by the end of the year.
We do not disclaim anything about this article. We're quite proud of it really.
