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The great Aussie meat pie could soon contain beef from countries that have had outbreaks of mad cow disease. From Monday, Australia is allowing the US, UK, Canada and Mexico to export meat to Australia.
The Daily Telegraph reports the Federal Government said it was important Australia lifted its decade-long ban on those countries but Opposition Parties demanded the ban remain because of the health risk.
"Australian consumers should rise up in anger and tell the Government to go to hell," Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan said.
Independent Senator Nick Xenophon added: "You could be eating a meat pie labelled `Made in Australia' because the packaging and pastry are Australian but the meat could be 100 per cent imported from a mad cow-affected country.
"Worse still, it's in prepared meals as well, like pre-prepared spaghetti bolognese."
The Cattle Council of Australia said the change to import rules would "not affect the food safety status of beef in Australia".
Mad cow disease is a fatal disease in cattle that affects the central nervous system. Humans who eat infected beef risk contracting the incurable and fatal Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
Australia's chief medical officer Jim Bishop said the risk of humans getting the disease was "extremely small" but Nationals Senator Fiona Nash said that any threat was too high a risk.
"I don't think anyone wants to walk into a restaurant with a sign out front saying, `Negligible risk of getting mad cow here'," she said.
Thousands of cattle have died of mad cow disease and millions have been slaughtered - mostly in the UK and North America.
