Talk:Food safety in Australia

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Food and drink

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Criteria for inclusion[edit]

I was just wondering how 'notable' a particular incident should be to merit inclusion. I'm thinking that incidents with national effect and coverage should certainly be included, but am unsure where the lower limit is. The reason I ask is because of continual issues, like pork roll (banh mi) contamination, where Melbourne had a rather large outbreak in the late 90s, but the issue is continual ([1], [2]); it's just a bit of a risky food, damn tasty though. It seems a little out of place and undue to talk about only one or two specific cases given how wide spread contamination has been in the past, but I would like input from others. The other thing I was considering was adding a section on pork rolls much like there is a section regarding raw milk. Thoughts? ColonialGrid (talk) 09:34, 20 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Its a good question. I am not sure of an answer. Any incidents must have references. Apparently there are around 50-60 outbreaks of salmonella every year in Australia. - Shiftchange (talk) 10:22, 20 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's something that inherently kind of requires a judgment call: a kind of lower-bar than WP:GNG but along the same lines. Raw milk and pork rolls, both of which have received significant reporting, would be examples of passing that bar, and I think the rest of the current list sets a good sort of informal standard: they're all clearly appropriate for this kind of thing. I think the brief treatment of the Garibaldi incident (even though more would be a bit undue in a list of that nature) again highlights the need for a standalone article on that.

I think having separate sections for specific issues (i.e. raw milk or pork rolls) just risks making the article a motley bunch of sections on whatever issues Wikipedians' happened to notice, and unless there's a good contextual overview of those amidst other food safety issues otherwhere, I'd rather they had a dot-pointed paragraph in an "ongoing issues" section. "Death cap mushrooms" would be another one for such a list, considering they keep getting press for killing people every year.

I also wonder if Raw milk in Australia isn't a topic that could be broken out into it's own article: it's a subject of clear public debate in reliable sources, and an internationally-contentious public health issue to which Australia has its own individual responses. I think doing the same with pork rolls would be a clusterfuck-in-waiting though, since I don't see the overview-discussion in the same way and I could see it getting a bit racist. The Drover's Wife (talk) 10:47, 20 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]