Holding orders for imported food

We apply and publish holding orders for imported food that:

• we believe poses a serious risk to human health
• has failed inspection or we think it’s reasonable to believe that it would fail. 

Holding orders are legal instruments issued under the Imported Food Control Act 1992.

Holding orders ensure future consignments (same product, producer and country of origin) of a food are referred for inspection to verify compliance and safety.  

Holding orders for food that poses a serious risk to human health

We can apply holding orders to an imported food on the basis there are reasonable grounds for believing the food may pose a serious risk to human health. This holding order is active for 28 days, and can be extended until we receive assurances from the exporting country that future imports are safe.

This table shows holding orders for food that poses a serious risk to human health.

Holding order number	Product description	Reasonable grounds	Date applied (month and year)	Holding order Instrument
19001	Salted manila clam	Association with hepatitis A outbreak	21 September 2019	PDF (338 KB), DOCX (82 KB)

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Holding orders for failing food

We apply a holding order for imported food:

• that has failed inspection
• if there are reasonable grounds to believe that it would fail an inspection.

We ensure future consignments of this food are inspected under the Imported Food Inspection Scheme (IFIS).

Holding orders apply until a history of compliance to the IFIS is demonstrated. This is usually after five consecutive passes or two years from the holding order implementation date.

This table shows the current holding orders we’ve applied each month.

Monthly holding orders

[expand all]

2019

November 2019

Holding order revocations for food that poses a serious risk to human health

We revoke holding orders applied to food that poses a serious risk to human health when we receive assurances from the exporting country that future imports are safe.

There are currently no holding order revocations for food that poses a serious risk to human health.

Holding order revocations for failing food

We revoke holding orders on failing food when a history of compliance is demonstrated. The instrument revoking these is published monthly.

Monthly revocations

November 2019