Imported foods

Foods imported for sale in Australia must comply with the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code (the Code). All imported foods must also comply with strict biosecurity requirements. Food importers are responsible for ensuring that all food they import complies with the relevant standards in the Code.

For all foods on sale in Australia, whether locally produced or imported, state and territory departments and agencies are responsible for enforcing the Code. Complaints about potentially non-compliant food, including imported food, can be directed to your relevant state or territory enforcement agency.

The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) administers a risk-based border inspection program - the Imported Food Inspection Scheme - to ensure that food importers only import food that is safe and compliant with the Code.  Please see Importing food into Australia on the DAFF website for more information.

As is the case with all countries, it is not practical to inspect every food item imported into Australia. FSANZ provides DAFF with advice on which foods pose a medium or high risk to public health and safety. This advice helps DAFF determine which foods are regularly inspected.

Taking an evidence-based approach to determine food safety risks, our risk advice to DAFF is prepared using  food and hazard pairing: e.g., bivalve molluscs and norovirus. Our imported food risk assessment document provides further details on how this risk assessment advice is prepared, including the types of information and data considered and the methodology used to determine the level of risk.

Completed imported food risk statements

This table will be updated as new assessments are finalised and provided to DAFF.