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Liveability: environmental quality (continued)

Food quality

Nutritional adequacy of the food supply

The Australian food supply provides a wide range of foods in fresh, processed, mixed or prepared forms. Overall the food supply is adequate to meet the nutritional needs of Australians (ABS 1998k). Although the vast majority of Australians do have access to a wide range of foods, this is not the case in rural and remote Australia.

A more complete discussion of food has been prepared for this SoE theme report and will appear in a technical paper.

A newly discovered issue is a resurgence of iodine deficiency in Australia. Australian soils are deficient in iodine, so our crops tend to be lacking in this nutrient. For three decades we have had sufficient iodine as a consequence of the use of iodine-containing sanitisers in the dairy industry and consumption of iodised salt. Cleaning methods and the pattern of salt consumption are changing. Now urinary iodine excretion levels are low enough to cause concern, especially for pregnant women and children (Gunton et al. 1999). Similar concerns are being expressed in the United States and New Zealand.

Food quality and safety

The most obvious impact of the environment relates to the contamination of produce with chemicals such as heavy metals in the soil, or persistent pesticides (such as organochlorines) which are now no longer in use but still remain available for uptake by crop and pasture plants. The current approach to surveillance and monitoring for these residues is summarised by Rowland et al. (1997) and is discussed in more detail in the Land Theme Report.

The National Registration Authority for Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals results show that the quality of Australian produce is high with regard to residues. The UNEP/FAO/WHO Food Contamination Monitoring Program shows that Australian's dietary exposures are among the lowest in the world.

Attitudinal surveys indicate that consumers regard contamination by chemicals as much more important than contamination by microbes (Lester 1994). Hall (1999) regards this as perverse, as in general the actual chemical risks are smaller by orders of magnitude than those posed by microbial contamination.

There has been concern about the use of all antibiotics in animals if they are related to those used for therapy in humans. The concern centres on the induction of antibiotic resistance in the bacterial flora of the animals that may result in antibiotic-resistant infections in humans, the most important currently being vancomycin-resistant enterococci. Overall the problem in Australia appears to be small and efforts should be directed at keeping it that way. A report of an interdepartmental committee (the Joint Expert Technical Advisory Committee on Antibiotic Resistance) is currently under review. A resistance management plan is proposed that incorporates elements of regulation, surveillance, infection prevention, education (including prudent use principles), and research.

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