Food Standards Australia New Zealand
Australian government body, 2002-
Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) (Māori: Te Mana Kounga Kai – Ahitereiria me Aotearoa), formerly Australia New Zealand Food Authority (ANZFA), is the statutory authority in the Australian Government Health portfolio that is responsible under the Joint Food Standards Treaty for developing the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code, which contains food standards for Australia and New Zealand.
Description
FSANZ develops the standards in consultation with experts, other government agencies and stakeholders; the standards are enforced by state and territory departments, agencies and local councils in Australia, the Ministry for Primary Industries in New Zealand, and the Australian Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment for food imported into Australia. According to legislation, the recommendations made by the body should be open and accountable, and based upon a rigorous scientific assessment of risk to public health and safety, though FSANZ's commitment to this has been disputed by leading public health and consumer representatives across Australia and New Zealand.
All decisions made by FSANZ must be approved by the Australia and New Zealand Food Regulation Ministerial Council, which is composed of the Health Minister from each of the Australian states and territories, and the Health Minister from New Zealand, and other participating Ministers nominated by each jurisdiction.
Publications from FSANZ include the Australian Total Diet Survey and Shoppers' Guide to Food Additives and labels.
History
FSANZ began as an Australia-only agency, the National Food Authority, established under the National Food Authority Act 1991. In 1995, the National Food Authority's jurisdiction was extended to New Zealand, under the Joint Food Standards Treaty, and it was consequently renamed the Australia New Zealand Food Authority (ANZFA). It subsequently adopted its present name, Food Standards Australia New Zealand, in 2001.
Nomenclature
This authority is sometimes cited variously as Australia and New Zealand Food Standards/Safety Authority (ANZFSA), possibly incorrect nomenclature arising due to confusion with the old initialism ANZFA, and with the acronym of the New Zealand authority, New Zealand Food Safety, which previously managed such questions in New Zealand.
Fellows
In 2000 FSANZ established a programme to appoint fellows to provide expert advice.
“Food Standards Australia New Zealand” enters the record as australian government body, 2002-. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Food, Standards and Australia can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Food Standards Australia New Zealand” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Food, Standards and Australia provides the most credible route into that argument.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q283662. VIAF identifies the subject as 156277051. The Library of Congress control number is no2002096099. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1991, 1995, 2001 and 2000.
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This entry incorporates text from “Food Standards Australia New Zealand” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.