EN10420 The recent ABC Four Corners investigation ("Duped: Food Exposed") revealed profound systemic failures in Australia's food supply chain, exposing widespread food fraud, including toxic chemical contamination in spices, illegal meat substitutions, and deceptive country-of-origin labeling. Currently, Australia lacks a unified, proactive federal authority to investigate food crime. Responsibility is fragmented across inadequate local council inspectors and under-resourced state food authorities that rely primarily on reactive consumer complaints rather than routine, rigorous testing. This regulatory vacuum allows illicit imported food products to easily bypass detection, putting public health at severe risk and forcing honest Australian farmers into an unfair, unsustainable price war against unverified, counterfeit competitors. Peer nations, including the United Kingdom, have successfully mitigated these threats by establishing centralized, dedicated enforcement bodies like the National Food Crime Unit (NFCU) to actively hunt, intercept, and prosecute food criminals. Australia urgently requires an equivalent independent federal regulator to protect its citizens, secure national biosecurity, and restore trust in our food system. We therefore ask the House to introduce legislation to establish a dedicated, independent National Food Fraud Regulator with the federal authority and funding to: - Conduct mandatory, proactive random testing on imported and domestic food supplies. - Investigate and criminally prosecute companies, syndicated and individuals involved in food adulteration and labeling deception, including the sale of such items. - Coordinate a centralized national intelligence network to trace and eliminate food fraud across all states and territories. from five citizens (Petition No. EN10420)