The Impact of Proposed new Primary Produce Regulations

Most food gardeners would in the past have taken their surplus produce to food swaps, community houses or trade tables at Food Garden Group garden visits. If proposed BioSecurity Tasmania regulations get the green light you will be in breach of primary produce regulations if you do so without first providing BioSecurity Tasmania with detailed paperwork. You can read more about this below. Please respond to BioSecurity Tasmania's request for feedback before 30 July!

For most people food safety is only in the spotlight when food that is supposed to be safe, is in some way contaminated and causes consumers to become ill or, worse, die. It is good that Biosecurity Tasmania wants to introduce new regulations that aims to make primary produce safer.

The new regulations would align Tasmania with stricter national standards that aim to prevent rising foodborne illness outbreaks, such as the recent recall of alfalfa sprouts due to potential salmonella contamination. The new regulations will apply to berries, leafy vegetables and melons.

 

The proposed Primary Produce Safety (Horticulture Produce) Regulations were made available for comment late last year (phase-1), and many people provided feedback. BioSecurity Tasmania then published revised regulations (phase-2), and is inviting Tasmanians to comment by 5pm on 30 July.

The proposed regulations have raised many concerns, most of which have not been addressed in the phase-2 draft. They will add cost and administrative burden on small and large growers and may lead to some leaving the industry. They may also result in the demise of many non-commercial community activities that make food available to Tasmanians, thereby directly contradicting current government policies that aim to maximise food availability.

Olivia Rundle, Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Tasmania, has produced a series of YouTube videos in which she explains what BioSecurity Tasmania is proposing and how the new regulations will impact on Tasmanians. You can find her videos here. 

Primary produce safety is a big subject. It is therefore great that Olivia has tried to cover all aspects of the proposed regulations in her videos, so all affected growers, from home-gardeners to large commercial farms, can find out what is proposed, without having to plough through the comprehensive regulations themselves.

In this Food Garden Group newsletter, I want to draw your attention to the impact the proposed regulations will have on informal road-side food stalls, food swap events, and produce trade tables - activities supported and organised by individual home gardeners, where little or no money changes hands.

Extensive feedback on the phase-1 draft of the regulations didn’t result in making the regulations more workable for home horticultural activities. 

The phase-2 draft regulations state that home gardeners can only be exempted from regulations if their leafy vegetables, berries and lemons are consumed within the household, or given away to friends, family or neighbours.

In all other situations (road-side food stalls, food swaps, trade tables, you name it – any situation in which small quantities of produce are given or sold to the wider community) home growers will have to provide to BioSecurity Tasmania what are called ‘tier-1 notifications’, which are too onerous for most people to bother (for more information see Olivia’s video on tier-1 notifications here).

The result may be that most of these activities will either cease or, if continued, will be in breach of BioSecurity Tasmania regulations.

In Olivia’s words ..

These regulations are going to discourage long-standing community practices, including food swaps, roadside honesty stalls, fundraising produce sales, and informal local food networks.

Biosecurity Tasmania has not been able to provide any evidence of outbreaks of disease from home-scale producers. Many people requested that in their phase-1 submissions.

Effectively, the fears that many of us have about overreach by the government, loss of community autonomy, and erosion of the way of life we hold dear, have pretty much all been confirmed or ignored by the phase two proposal.


Please provide your comments to BioSecurity Tasmania. The deadline for comments is 30 July 2026. 

You don’t have to comment on the whole set of regulations. You can comment on just one or more aspects.

Please provide your feedback to BioSecurity Tasmania here.

The following BioSecurity Tasmania information can help you form your opinion:

• Draft Regulations At a Glance here.
• Frequently Asked Questions - Development of Primary Produce Safety (Horticulture Produce) Regulations here.
• Supporting Information here.