At a 1997 meeting of the EU s Permanent Veterinary Committee, a majority of members regarded the available documentation to be insufficiently convincing for introduction of decontamination in the EU to be allowed. Interventions are already widely used in the US and are very likely to become even more prevalent. Notwithstanding the view that decontamination procedures should not be used to correct problems of contamination, and the current EU opinion that hygienic processing is sufficient to assure product safety, decontamination has an important role to play. These findings are published as Australian Market Basket Surveys . The 1996 survey, which covers the period 1996-98, indicates that Australia s food supply is among the safest in the world and that the level of pesticide residues and contaminants in its food are well within the safety standards set by health authorities, both here and overseas.
Food is sampled in three categories, core, regional and national.
Regional foods are those which may show regional variation in residue and contaminant levels and include meat, vegetables and fruit. Examples of national foods include corn flakes, canned tuna and infant cereal. They are distributed nationwide from a small number of outlets and are not expected to show regional variation. In the 1996 survey nine composite samples were analysed for each of forty-two national foods. Information from the survey assists the review process for some standards of the Food Standards Code, including Standard A12, Metals and Contaminants in Food and Standard A14, Maximum Residue Limits.