PFAS - food safety CON
"You are producers, we'll just set the levels [PFAS] and you will be right for ever and a day. It will always be safe", stated a well-known toxicologist at a very public Queensland meeting to impacted farmers fearful about their livelihood and ability to sell their livestock at market. It is very concerning that PFAS levels have remained irresponsibly higher than other countries. But to state the levels can be manipulated to suit a desired outcome reveals our food safety laws are open to abuse. Further reading puts the integrity of Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) in question and whether political influence is infiltrating our food standards codes?
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ABC Radio Northern Territory broadcast an episode with Professor Mark Taylor in 2017 about How worried do we need to be about PFAS chemicals? Professor Mark Taylor is now EPA Victoria's Chief Environmental Scientist. Listen to him clarify "absence of evidence doesn't mean evidence of absence". |
why is fsanz on the nose
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FSANZ develops food standards and sets Tolerable Daily Intake (TDIs) for PFAS to ensure no deceptive conduct and that food purchased is safe to consume. Toxicologists set the TDIs from toxicology studies on the express objective to limit the amount of PFAS exposures from what you eat and drink. As a comparison on this 2020 link, FSANZ set TDIs in 2016. Note the unit of measure symbol is the all important and very confusing distinction. The TDIs as of March 2023 have not changed.
Nanograms = ng Micrograms = µg
Converting weekly to a daily intake (TDI) is:
Below are the current Australian values from the National Environment Management Plan (NEMP 2) noted in micrograms. The Draft NEMP 3 does not propose any changes. 
EFSA is far more protective of human health with other countries having or proposing stricter food standards and drinking water reference values than Australia.
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Our Australian TDIs are used as 'safe end points' used for risk assessments but how safe are they when our contemporaries have declared they are not?
A recent (15 March 2023) proposal change for US EPA drinking water guidelines changes the originally 2022 proposed amount of 0.02 & 0.004ppt now to 4ppt. The proposal, if finalized, would regulate PFOA and PFOS as individual contaminants, and will regulate four other PFAS – PFNA, PFHxS, PFBS, and GenX Chemicals – as a mixture. US science assesses risks of harm from PFAS to human health as far greater than Australia's. Who can explain this anomaly? 
So it is highly debatable that FSANZ diet studies have any credibility to protect our human health from PFAS exposures when a benchmark is so high.
Read their latest 2021 report - 27th Australian Total Diet Study PFAS substances concluding business as usual. This study is useless for heavily exposed individuals wanting to know targeted information about the food and water sourced in their local regional area. It's just a bunch of statistics using means and average analysis on everything general. FSANZ know this is not protecting those people most impacted. The trickle-down effect then allows other agencies to use FSANZ TDIs as a default position so PFAS contaminated livestock and food produce using PFAS contaminated water or feed stock can be sold or determined is safe to consume. All the while the individual is being deceived and misled about what they are consuming. Agriculture Victoria has the best example of PFAS misinformation dished out by a government entity. |
Read the following complaint letter sent to the FSANZ Board challenging lack of protections for human health highlighting the potential for Board Directors to be liable on what is foreseeable and a lack of due diligence.
Their response on 9 March 2023 continues the business as usual while international standards keep lowering.
Their response on 9 March 2023 continues the business as usual while international standards keep lowering.
Just to confuse with another unit of measure, a Department of Health representative in NSW gave a figure to a farmer that 19 nanograms per millilitre of blood (0.19ng/ml) is what they model for livestock (which toxicologist came up with that amount) which equated to the farmer being told not to eat any more than 200grams of his own beef per month because his cattle PFAS levels were around 180ng/ml. But you can ON-SELL for some other person to consume.
That one piece of beef over the month does not account for all the other exposures of PFAS from drinking water, other food products, PFAS residues from packaging, wrappers to ingesting the dust the farmer works in.
These figures are way too high.
However, when there are cattle with levels around 1500ng/ml of PFAS the Australian Government has declared is fit for human consumption something is seriously wrong with our food safety laws.
You can’t see or taste PFAS, but there are more than 12,000 chemicals that could be lurking in your drinking water, food and environment causing everything from birth defects to cancer because PFAS build up in our blood and organs. This has the potential to damage the health of millions for decades to come and the Australia Government are pretending it is not a problem!!!
That one piece of beef over the month does not account for all the other exposures of PFAS from drinking water, other food products, PFAS residues from packaging, wrappers to ingesting the dust the farmer works in.
These figures are way too high.
- The new 2023 EFSA derived TWI = 4.4 ng/kg body weight for the sum of PFOS, PFOA, PFHxS and PFNA converted to TDI = 0.63 ng/kgbw-day corresponds to blood serum = 6.9 ng/ml for the sum of these four PFAS in women at the age of 35 years
However, when there are cattle with levels around 1500ng/ml of PFAS the Australian Government has declared is fit for human consumption something is seriously wrong with our food safety laws.
You can’t see or taste PFAS, but there are more than 12,000 chemicals that could be lurking in your drinking water, food and environment causing everything from birth defects to cancer because PFAS build up in our blood and organs. This has the potential to damage the health of millions for decades to come and the Australia Government are pretending it is not a problem!!!
The background story
The Saturday Paper exposed this conflict of interest where 'consultants paid millions by Defence helped revise chemical safety standards that could shield the department from multiple compensation claims. The April 5 workshop set “tolerable daily intake” levels for both chemicals at 75 times higher than acceptable limits in the United States. Safe drinking water limits were set at more than 78 times the US level. At the workshop were Golder Associates, a global environmental consultancy; Newcastle-based CRC Care, part owned by the Defence Department; and the Melbourne company ToxConsult.'
ToxConsult were also engaged by ESSO with the Gippsland PFAS scandal at their Longford Gas plant where ESSO breached their EPA discharge licence and now appears to have PFAS contamination of groundwater, surface water and soil all the way to the coast.
The article from 2016 was damning and rightly so stating 'The relaxed guidelines could help defence reduce potential legal liability for contamination and clean-up costs, lawyers say. This is a serious issue for the Defence Department.'
ToxConsult were also engaged by ESSO with the Gippsland PFAS scandal at their Longford Gas plant where ESSO breached their EPA discharge licence and now appears to have PFAS contamination of groundwater, surface water and soil all the way to the coast.
The article from 2016 was damning and rightly so stating 'The relaxed guidelines could help defence reduce potential legal liability for contamination and clean-up costs, lawyers say. This is a serious issue for the Defence Department.'
Tracking PFAS contaminated food
Our health is the sum of food and water we consume but without disclosures or origins we don't know what we are feeding our families. For the general population, the main route of exposure to PFAS is through food and the consumption of contaminated drinking water.
CoM provided a submission into the 2018 Inquiry into the management of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) contamination in and around Defence bases. Shocking that a federal inquiry on PFAS was limited to defence sites which then complicates how the rest of Australia with state based regulatory frameworks could respond and coordinate management between agencies of the Commonwealth Government.
This inquiry goes to the heart of major livestock authorities burying their heads in the sand namely Dept of Foreign Affairs & Trade, SafeMeat, Meat & Livestock Australia, Dairy Australia, insurance liability and Occupational Health & Safety.
CoM did get a quote noted in the final report with subsections noted on this webpage link.
This issue is dealt with on the PFAS Livestock page.
CoM provided a submission into the 2018 Inquiry into the management of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) contamination in and around Defence bases. Shocking that a federal inquiry on PFAS was limited to defence sites which then complicates how the rest of Australia with state based regulatory frameworks could respond and coordinate management between agencies of the Commonwealth Government.
This inquiry goes to the heart of major livestock authorities burying their heads in the sand namely Dept of Foreign Affairs & Trade, SafeMeat, Meat & Livestock Australia, Dairy Australia, insurance liability and Occupational Health & Safety.
CoM did get a quote noted in the final report with subsections noted on this webpage link.
- 6.8 The Coalition Against PFAS described this situation as ‘contradictory and illogical’, and noted that some farmers had elected to stop selling altogether in order to prevent contaminated produce from entering the nation’s food supply. The group also highlighted biosecurity risks faced by livestock producers in some areas, and attached correspondence from three separate cattle breeders associations who had written to the Government to warn of ‘potentially catastrophic’ consequences to producers’ livelihoods, Australia’s export markets and the beef industry as a whole. The Coalition Against PFAS called for the Government to ‘take a clear and reasonable position on biosecurity’.
- 6.9 Ms Dianne Priddle, a stud cattle producer in Oakey, told the Committee that consumers had a right to know whether products were contaminated by PFAS: We all trade on our image which is clean and green within Australia and the world. … The consumers have the right to know—and they want to know—what they are eating in Australia and how we produced that item. Yet at assessments and walk-in sessions given by Defence and AECOM, the question has been asked and the answer given that the public does not have the right to know if PFAS contamination is in the product. This is a double standard.
- 6.10 Tracey Anton, of the Latrobe Valley in Victoria, similarly raised concerns that either the Government was allowing PFAS contaminated agricultural produce to be exported, or it was being distributed in the domestic market while ‘denying a person a right to choose between contaminated and non-contaminated foodstuff’.
- 6.11 The Victorian Government submitted that a ‘lack of nationally regulated maximum levels for PFAS in foods complicates the provision of defensible advice to agriculture producers, including livestock producers and meat processors’. However, it noted that the health-based guidance values developed by Food Standards Australia New Zealand had provided some clarity and consistency across jurisdictions.
This issue is dealt with on the PFAS Livestock page.
what is acceptable
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Chemicals are the hazards to human health but the risk is the probability of harm. You can't have zero risk as every chemical presents a risk starting at negligible risk.
As an example,
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Source graphic - https://scimoms.com/hazard-risk/
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In sum, studies have shown that exposure to PFOA and PFOS is associated with numerous and varied adverse effects to human health. This evidence plays a major role in the EPA's [US] proposal to designate PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances. Proposed Designation of Perfluorooctanoic Acid (PFOA) and Perfluorooctanesulfonic Acid (PFOS) as CERCLA Hazardous Substances
Why Victoria is noteworthy
Victoria had the Fiskville Inquiry in 2015 where a lot was exposed to uncover what should be happening with our food safety but isn't.
What happened in this inquiry is entirely relevant to other sites around Victoria and Australia.
There is an established hierarchy of responsibility overseeing heavily PFAS contaminated sites from state based EPA appointed auditors, consultant companies conducting human health assessments, toxicologists, etc., to determine the risks to the person, environment and a business. A toxicologist can't look at evidence without understanding the latest research so when overseas countries says it's a problem and their TDIs are so much lower, how can Victoria, Queensland, NSW and others say it is not a problem here and rate risk as low potentially allowing polluters to be absolved from liability and compensation.
This is the biggest cop out and all relevant Victoria and state government departments and agencies need to get up to speed because a substantial state of knowledge is evident with new and credible research. Pretending governments state of knowledge is current is dangerous. Pleading ignorance in court just won't cut it.
What happened in this inquiry is entirely relevant to other sites around Victoria and Australia.
There is an established hierarchy of responsibility overseeing heavily PFAS contaminated sites from state based EPA appointed auditors, consultant companies conducting human health assessments, toxicologists, etc., to determine the risks to the person, environment and a business. A toxicologist can't look at evidence without understanding the latest research so when overseas countries says it's a problem and their TDIs are so much lower, how can Victoria, Queensland, NSW and others say it is not a problem here and rate risk as low potentially allowing polluters to be absolved from liability and compensation.
This is the biggest cop out and all relevant Victoria and state government departments and agencies need to get up to speed because a substantial state of knowledge is evident with new and credible research. Pretending governments state of knowledge is current is dangerous. Pleading ignorance in court just won't cut it.
who is pulling the strings of our food safety code
If you are buying a product that the relevant state and territory Food Act is saying is safe to eat - then it should be backed up by the Federal Food Safety Code. To note, these codes and Acts are the law of the land and are in place for a reason and what the Australian Government should be complying with but is not.
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Victorian FOOD ACT 1994 - SECT 4E - Meaning of unsuitable food:
(1) For the purposes of this Act, food is unsuitable if it is food that-- (d) contains a biological or chemical agent, or other matter or substance, that is foreign to the nature of the food. (2) However, food is not unsuitable for the purposes of this Act merely because-- (d) it contains any matter or substance that is permitted by the Food Standards Code. |
I am not aware of any part of the Food Safety Code that states one, or any number of PFAS compounds, are permitted by the Food Safety Code in any food group therefore the levels of any PFAS compound for consumption should be ZERO.
This is backed up with transcripts from the 2015 Fiskville Inquiry when Dr Brendan Tatham from PrimeSafe was asked the following questions. |
This PrimeSafe transcript needs to be read in total (8 pages- 70KB) to highlight mismanagement at the highest level.
The CHAIR—Are you aware if there are any standards in respect of perfluorinated chemicals such as PFOS or PFOA?
The CHAIR—Are you aware if there are any standards in respect of perfluorinated chemicals such as PFOS or PFOA?
- Dr TATHAM—The standards which PrimeSafe utilises and makes codes under the Meat Industry Act, the two which are relevant here are 4696, an Australian standard for the hygienic production of meat for human consumption, and then the food standards code. Under the food standards code there is a list of maximum residue limits for a range of chemicals. They are listed within the food standards code. The technical detail is described in my statement. PFOS is not one of the chemicals listed in the food standards code, which means that in order for compliance to be demonstrated by an abattoir for the food standards code, there should be zero or at the not detectable limit for that chemical, if it is not listed as an MRL in the food standards code.
- Dr TATHAM--Correct.
- Dr TATHAM—I understand the issue that you have identified. When non-compliance is suspected or detected with regard to issues of public health, PrimeSafe seeks advice from the chief health officer around: is there a public health risk, and therefore should PrimeSafe put in place any regulatory action which is over and above what the standards require? So in a way the standards are just looking after what happens on a day-to-day basis and if an issue—--
- Dr TATHAM—No, I do not know the answer to that question. I would have thought that given that there is now data being produced around the chemical and that is an increasing amount of data over time, that it might be something that the food standards code and the national agency that sets those limits would be wanting to consider.
- Dr TATHAM—Again, I cannot answer that question. The standards are controlled by FSANZ, Food Standards Australia New Zealand. It is a commonwealth body, and is informed by science and risk assessment people at the national level.
And therein lies the problem - the standards are controlled by FSANZ, informed by toxicologists that appear to have a vested interest in Commonwealth PFAS contaminated sites using outdated science to inform risk assessments.
This is one hell of a rort and convenient that Department of Health are silent on PFAS exposures using the same default back to FSANZ.
The Federal Government are asking people and businesses to break state and federal laws.
This is one hell of a rort and convenient that Department of Health are silent on PFAS exposures using the same default back to FSANZ.
The Federal Government are asking people and businesses to break state and federal laws.
- What right has FSANZ got to overrule state & federal laws and ignore the objectives of their own acts?
- What right has FSANZ got to overrule people's safety, their families, pregnant women and children?
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Ultimately, the FSANZ Board decides whether or not to approve changes to the Food Standards Code. These decisions are notified to Australian and New Zealand ministers responsible for food regulation (the Australia and New Zealand Ministerial Forum on Food Regulation). The forum can adopt, make changes to or reject standards and can ask FSANZ to review its decisions.
All the relevant Ministers are part of this forum and making decisions to not regulate PFAS with FSANZ complicit. |
Forum membership is designed to reflect the whole-of-food chain approach to food regulation. Members include the following:
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About time the FSANZ Board and responsible ministers are held to account.
all paths lead back to fsanz
Apparently, 'Australia has taken measures to reduce human exposure to PFAS and limit PFAS pollution but it is only at the state and local level rather than at the national level'. This is a comment from a 2021 research study comparing one country against another on PFAS regulation but from Australia's position in 2017. Very damning that Australia's position has not changed. Local and state governments 'cannot' reduce PFAS exposures based on updated and international research and actions when the Australian Government have set outdated national standards (TDIs, Food Safety Codes) rather than regulation based on best knowledge - aka the closed loop back to FSANZ, every agencies default to do nothing.
I challenge why the State and Territory EPA agencies cannot better protect their communities to reduce exposures as all state EPA's all have a duty of care to us, not the federal government.
Comment by FSANZ from the same 2018 Inquiry -
I challenge why the State and Territory EPA agencies cannot better protect their communities to reduce exposures as all state EPA's all have a duty of care to us, not the federal government.
Comment by FSANZ from the same 2018 Inquiry -
- 6.14 Food Standards Australia and New Zealand told the Committee that currently, there was not enough data in the general food supply to establish legal PFAS limits. It noted that, based on overseas studies and the ‘little amount of data that we have’, the background levels of PFAS ‘are extremely low’. As a result, it questioned whether a standard, which would be set for general population exposures, would be beneficial to public health. However, Food Standards Australia and New Zealand noted that the 2019 Total Diet Survey would ‘inform more discussion on whether or not standards are warranted and whether or not they could be set for these chemicals’.