The types of country of origin claims that may be made about products vary. It is up to you to determine what kind of claim you can make.

If you choose to make an origin claim, the ACL says you can safely make the following claims if you satisfy the below criteria.

If you make a claim that your product originated from a particular country the Australian Consumer Law (or ACL) requires that the claim be one – truthful, two – clear, and three – accurate.

Of course, with all the different ingredients or components that can make up a product, as well as the possibility of processing in multiple countries, it’s not always that easy working out what type of claim to make about your product. So to help out, the ACL outlines four situations where you can safely make a country of origin claim without it raising concerns under the law.

These are when you can show that your product was – one – grown in a particular country, two – produced in a particular country, three – made, manufactured or originated in a particular country or four – carries a mark in the country of origin food labelling information standard.

Each category has its own conditions that must be met. If you’re able to show that your product fits in one of these categories, you will have an automatic defence against allegations that the claim is false, misleading, or deceptive. These are called the safe harbour defences, and they exist to provide you with peace of mind when you make a country of origin claim.

For more information about country of origin claims, visit the ACCC website.

‘Grown in’

You can confidently say something was grown in a country if all of the significant ingredients or components were grown in the country and all (or virtually all) of the processing occurred in that same country. Something is ‘grown’ if it:

  • materially increased in size in the country claimed (e.g. a mango grown on a tree or a tree grown from a seedling)
  • was germinated in that country (e.g. onions or growing of wheat from seed)
  • was harvested or extracted from something grown in that country (e.g. chickens’ eggs, cow’s milk or wool from a sheep).

‘Product of’

The ACL says that you can claim to have produced something in a country if all of the significant ingredients or components were grown or originated in the named country and all (or virtually all) of the processing occurred there too.

This claim often overlaps with ‘grown in’. The main differences between the 2 claims are that ‘product of’ is:

  • often used for more processed products (e.g. canned foods, clothing or textiles)
  • wider in scope as it captures products that originate in a country but are not technically ‘grown’ there (e.g. water or salt).

‘Made in’

Under the ACL, you can safely claim that your product was ‘made in' a particular country if it underwent its last substantial transformation in the country named.

Note: Food products that cannot claim to have been grown, produced or made in a single country must be labelled with information about the country it was 'packed in'.