The enquiry hopes to give consumers more choice when they order seafood at restaurants. Photo: Kostas Deves.
Country of origin seafood labelling stops at the wholesaler. Calls for more transparency at the restaurant level has the seafood industry happy, but local eateries seeing red.
If you knew that your $25 barramundi meal at your favourite restaurant was in fact caught in South East Asia a week ago, would you buy it?
A senate enquiry into seafood labelling is causing panic in the restaurant and take-away industries, as it looks into whether consumers deserve more transparency at the cash register.
At the wholesale end of the industry, all their products have to come with a country of origin label, but restaurateurs and local take-away owners don’t need
to offer the same.
Many businesses feel they will lose customers if they are forced to identify where their seafood comes from, but also feel good quality imports will be given a bad name.
Steve Soultanidis, owner of Oakleigh Fish & Chippery, says all fish and chip shop owners should be striving to serve Australian produce but says some imported seafood is just as good if not better.
“There are some imported products that are unbelievably great, imported prawns are absolutely amazing,” he says.
“But mostly the local stuff is better.”
He has seen colleagues get lured by the cheaper cost of imported products but says they’ve paid the price for it.
“If you buy a Chinese fish it’s a lot cheaper, you’re basically looking at half the price on a box of flake, but the product is not very good at all,” he says.
“It’s night and day, you can just tell, you’ll lose a customer overnight.”
Greek restaurant Alpha Ouzeri says restaurants who take pride in their produce see that the investment is worth it. Despite running a Greek restaurant, chef Hristos Katopodis goes out of his way to use Australian seafood, which he believes is some of the best in the world.
“The best snapper is in Victoria, octopus, calamari, prawns, whiting is in South Australia,” he says.
“Victorian scallops are the best scallops in the world.”
Mr Katopodis chooses to tell his customers where his seafood comes from to be very transparent and to create more interest in local produce. He says customers are much more aware of what constitutes a good, fresh bit of seafood and are prepared to pay for it.
“They know what a good fish is, you can’t be tricking them,” he says.
Three quarters of all seafood consumed in Australia is imported.
At the wholesaler level, it’s a mixed bag of what clients ask for.
Queen Victoria Market fishmonger George Milonas says he sells more Australian seafood to locals during market days, but fills more mixed orders from the restaurant industry.
“There’s a mixture of both out there, so I wouldn’t say that one is predominately local, or one is predominately imported,” he tells Neos Kosmos.
“There are some stores that like to specialise in local produce.”
He feels many of his clients won’t be happy having to fork out more to buy fresher local products to appease customer demands.
“I’m sure the restaurateur would just like to put whatever they want on the menu,” he says.
“I think some of the restaurants won’t be happy.”
Although the senate enquiry won’t be finished until October 27, some politicians would like to see the rulings legislated to follow the Northern Territory’s model.
The Territory has had stricter seafood labelling laws in place for more than five years, forcing restaurants and local take-away shops to display where their seafood comes from.
Independent senator Nick Xenophon says the Northern Territory has shown the law is a success.
“There’s no reason we can’t roll that out to the rest of the country,” Senator Xenophon says.
He believes local industry will be the biggest winners if the laws are put in place nationally.
“If we had decent country of origin labelling laws it would actually create many thousands of Australian jobs,” he said this week.
Another issue high on the agenda of the enquiry is to standardise the names of 4,000 Australian and imported fish species.
A barramundi, a local Australian fish, is exactly the same as a sea bass that’s imported, but a restaurateur can label the fish as they like.
The Australian Barramundi Farmers Association spokesperson, Chris Calogeras, says labelling is hurting the local industry.
“When people see the word barramundi they equate it with Australia and it may or may not be,” he says.
Between five and six thousand tonnes of barramundi are produced in Australian each year, valued at $50-60 million.
About 1,500 tonnes is caught wild, while 13,000 tonnes are imported.
source: Neos Kosmos
STUDIO 3 NEWCASTLE AUSTRALIA 