Local Communities/AustralianTeam/Country Support

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Food categories

• You can help completing Australia categories and labels for the Eco-Score

Labels

• Help complete country-specific labels on Hunger Games: https://hunger.openfoodfacts.org/dashboard/australia

Laws

• https://wiki.openfoodfacts.org/User:Tacinte#Australian_Regulation_on_Food_Labelling
• Food_additives#Australia
• Dates_on_the_products#Australia

2024 Australian Competition and Consumer Commission price action

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) promotes competition and fair trade to benefit consumers.

Coles and Woolworths promised discounts for years. Now the ACCC alleges they 'misled' customers on more than 500 products

In the ACCC's legal statement, the programs aimed to lower the standard prices over a longer time period.

Coles and Woolworths have both said that they will fight the consumer watchdog's allegations of misleading "price drop" promotions. Both supermarket giants deny allegations they tricked customers with fake discounts. The ACCC announced its intention to pursue "declarations, penalties, costs and other orders".

In March 2024, the consumer advocacy group Choice reported a troubling trend among major retailers, highlighting ten notable instances of shrinkflation. Among the examples were Coles’ Mighty Grain cereal, which decreased in weight by 65 grams while maintaining its price of $4.50, and a similar reduction in Woolworths’ Max Charge grain cereal.

Traffic light systems and others

Australia uses the Health Star Rating system, created by Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ).

Food Scandals

• 2018 - https://www.industry.gov.au/anti-dumping-commission/archive-cases-and-electronic-public-record-epr/488 - Imported tomatoes
• 2018 - https://www.smh.com.au/healthcare/nestle-wipes-4-5-health-star-rating-off-flagship-milo-product-20180301-p4z295.html - Nestle/Milo removes 4.5 Health Star Rating from packaging under "as prepared" rules.
• 2019 - https://australiandairyfarmers.com.au/mediareleasespost/lion-price-highlights-impacts-of-coles-1-per-litre-milk/ - Duopoly affecting dairy production
• 2020 - https://www.deakin.edu.au/about-deakin/news-and-media-releases/articles/health-star-label-misleads-consumers-with-high-ratings-for-junk-food - Health Star rating misleading
• 2024 - https://youtu.be/MK-mNaEsmi0 - CEO walks out of interview when asked if his practices are anticompetitive
• 2024 - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-14/overhaul-of-health-star-ratings-labelling-and-marketing-of-food/104217784 - mandatory health star ratings are expected to be imposed on large food manufacturers

Consumer Organisations

Consumer_associations#Australia

https://www.foodauthority.nsw.gov.au/food-labelling/understanding-claims/heart-foundation-tick

National food companies

Independent brands

• List them here

Distributor brands

• List them here

Help convince local producers to share their data

🏭 Food manufacturers and retailers Yes! To enrich the database, we can count on contributors... but also on food manufacturers! Indeed, as they are the source of the data, which often means that they are able to provide good quality data, and in bigger volumes than manual individual contributions.
Help convince local producers to share their data

Supermarket chains

Supermarket	Share of national take-home food and grocery sales (2022-2023)
Woolworths	32.5%
Coles	24.8%
ALDI	8.1%
Metcash	5.7%
Other retailers	28.9%
Source: ACCC Supermarket Inquiry interim report Sept 2024

Market Share of Australian supermarkets

Company	Market Share (%)	Revenue ($m)
Woolworths	38.2	50,353.30
Coles	29	38,146.20
Aldi	8.6	11,294.40
Metcash (wholesaler, also known as IGA)	6.7	8,810.60
Costco	3.5	4,611.80
Foodworks Supermarket	0.1	157.9
Amazon Australia	0.1	130.9

(Data from IBISWorld)

Woolworths and Coles are the two largest supermarkets in Australia, having a combined market share of more than 65% of the grocery market. Aldi (Aldi Süd) is a recent arrival (after coming to Oz in 2001), and has managed to acquire a large market share from the Woolworths/Coles duopoly which prior to Aldi arriving was 80% market share.

Costco has a 3.5% market share, despite only having 15 stores in Australia (Woolworths has more than 1,100). It arrived in Melbourne, Australia in 2009.

Fun fact, Aldi owns Winn-Dixie in the US, who's stores look like a carbon copy of Coles stores... down to having similar "down, down" branding.

Geographic food origins databases

• List them here

Local databases of interest

• Help add the local egg traceability system: https://wiki.openfoodfacts.org/Food_Traceability_Codes/Eggs#Australia

Communities we can reach out to

• Facebook groups (local food, slow food, non-GMOs, organic…)
• Meetups
• Industry events
• Add your national coeliac/gluten non profit association
• Add your national Vegan non profit association
• Add your national Vegetarian non profit association
• Add your national Lactose patients non profit association

Open Prices - Access to Information requests (GDPR requests)

As part of Project:Open-Prices, we need price points for products, loads of them.

If you have a fidelity card, you can ask your data, using the GDPR (if you're in a EU country, or using other laws if you're elsewhere). https://wiki.openfoodfacts.org/GDPR_request#Australia

Open Products Facts

• Object_donation_websites#Australia

Past and present Australia issues on GitHub

• Australia issues on the Backend/Web/API (GitHub)
• Australia issues on the Mobile App (GitHub)

Data Completion statistics

• You can see Data Completion statistics for Australia at: https://wiki.openfoodfacts.org/Dashboard/Australia
• You can see the evolution of the number of products at: https://au.openfoodfacts.org/product-count

Follow Open Food Facts on social media

• Open Food Facts has created presence on social media over the years in many languages. We now have the capacity to produce content in English and French, but we have a harder time translating and posting to all accounts. You can help by joining the marketing channel on Slack, and proposing to help for your language/country. Please get in touch with the permanent team before anything.
• Follow Open Food Facts social media accounts for Australia: Public_Relations/Social_Media_accounts#Australia

Get in touch

Slack channel #australia