India Tops Australia's Imported Food Test Failures. Here Is What Fails, and How to Avoid It

If you import Indian food into Australia, expect it to be tested and know exactly what for. India had more failing records in Australia's imported food tests than any other country in every full year from 2021 to 2025. That sounds alarming until you read the records one by one, which is what we did.

In this post I'll go through what actually fails, product by product, and the test or check that would have caught each one before it left India. The caveat matters, so here it is up front - a failing record counts what the border checked and caught, not how often Indian food fails. Australia tests some foods far more than others, and a lot of India's export basket sits in the most-tested groups.

1. Read the Number Fairly First

Australia's Imported Food Inspection Scheme sorts food into two groups. "Risk foods", like ground chilli and peanuts, are referred for inspection on every consignment at first, and that drops to a quarter of consignments after five passes in a row. "Surveillance foods" are referred at about 5%, and a failure puts that product under a holding order until it passes again (DAFF, inspection scheme (opens in a new tab)).

So a country that ships lots of spices, nuts and snacks gets tested a lot, and gets caught more. India ships exactly that basket. I read India's place at the top as "expect to be tested" rather than "expect to fail", and the 411 that did go wrong went wrong in a handful of very repeatable ways (our count of DAFF failing food reports (opens in a new tab), January 2021 to July 2026).

That's good news for you, honestly. Repeatable failures are avoidable ones.

2. Chilli Powder and Salmonella

This is the big one. Of the 94 Indian Salmonella failures, 71 were chilli in some form - chilli powder, Kashmiri chilli, extra hot, Guntur, Byadgi, cayenne, crushed chilli. Kashmiri chilli powder alone failed 19 times (our count of DAFF records), and shredded and frozen coconut, sesame and ground pepper made up most of the rest.

Why chilli? It's dried in the open, often on farms, and grinding spreads any contamination through the whole lot without killing the Salmonella. A steam or other validated kill step does kill it. Plenty of Indian processors run one, and plenty of small packers selling to local shops don't, because their home market has never asked for it.

How to avoid it - buy ground chilli only from a processor with a validated microbial reduction step, and get the validation itself, not a promise. Test every lot for Salmonella before it ships, at a lab you choose, on a sample drawn by someone other than the packer. One clean certificate from last month says nothing about this month's lot. The full test-plan logic is on food import testing.

3. Tapioca Chips and Hydrocyanic Acid

Here's one almost nobody sees coming. Tapioca and cassava chips, a much-loved Kerala snack, failed 56 times on hydrocyanic acid (our count of DAFF records). Cassava naturally contains compounds that release it, and proper soaking and cooking bring it down.

Australia caps total hydrocyanic acid in ready-to-eat cassava chips at 10 mg/kg (FSANZ, Proposal P1002 (opens in a new tab)). Every failing Indian result we read was above that, and many were well above. A maker selling happily at home may never have measured it at all.

How to avoid it - send the 10 mg/kg limit to your supplier in writing before the first order, ask how their soaking and frying process controls it, and test each lot for total hydrocyanic acid. If the supplier has never heard of the limit then that's your answer.

4. Peanut Snacks and Aflatoxin

Nuts and peanuts failed 60 times, 49 of them on aflatoxin (our count of DAFF records). The products were mostly finished snacks rather than raw kernels - peanut chikki and brittle, masala peanuts, roasted and spiced peanuts, peanut bhujia.

Aflatoxin comes from mould on the raw nut, usually from damp storage, and roasting and spicing don't remove it. So the snack maker inherits the problem from whoever sold them the peanuts. A good snack exporter sorts and tests incoming kernels, while a small one buys from the local market on the day.

How to avoid it - ask your supplier where their peanuts come from and whether they test incoming lots for aflatoxin, and then test the finished product too. If you're buying several peanut lines from one maker, test each one, because they may use different kernel lots.

5. Vitamins Australia Doesn't Allow

This one is purely a rules mismatch, and it trips up good factories. 27 Indian failures were for vitamins or minerals added to foods where the Australian Food Standards Code doesn't permit them (Standard 1.3.2). The products were mixed fruit jam, vermicelli and pasta, and malt and cereal drink powders, and these failures rose to 11 in 2025 (our count of DAFF records).

Nothing is wrong with the food's safety here. The recipe was made for a market where adding those vitamins is normal and then sold into one where it isn't, which is a fair thing for an Indian maker not to know and a fair thing for you to catch.

How to avoid it - send the ingredient list to your customs broker or a food compliance adviser in Australia before you order, and ask specifically about added vitamins and minerals. If needed, ask the maker for an export recipe without them. Many will happily do it for a decent order.

6. Betel Nut, Fresh Vegetables and the Rest

Betel nut (areca) and mouth fresheners containing it failed 32 times, 19 of them because areca is a prohibited plant in food in Australia (our count of DAFF records). If your mouth freshener mix lists supari or areca, it won't clear. Check every ingredient of a blended product, not just the headline one.

Fresh and frozen vegetables, mostly spinach, okra, gourds, drumstick and betel leaves, failed 56 times, 53 of them on pesticide residues. Raisins and sultanas added 16 more, and lentils 10. The pesticides named most were chlorpyrifos (28 records), carbendazim (21), profenofos (10) and acephate (9) (same records).

These are farm-stage problems. The fix is a supplier who knows which farms it buys from and runs a residue screen against Australian limits, not Indian ones.

Last, a small one. Dried fish and fish chips, mostly Maldive fish chips and dried anchovy, failed 6 times on histamine, which comes from fish that wasn't kept cold before drying.

7. What a Failure Costs You

A failed food can't be released. Your options are usually relabelling where that fixes the fault, or supervised destruction or re-export. Then comes the expensive bit - a holding order on that product from that producer, so every later consignment is inspected until a run of them pass (DAFF, as covered in food import testing).

One bad lot of chilli can slow down your next five, and that's why pre-shipment testing is cheap by comparison. Australia's specific rules for Indian goods, including BICON permits for some spices, are on India to Australia, and product-level test plans live on quality control.

8. Should You Worry About Indian Food?

No, but you should plan for it. Strip the 411 records down and nearly all of them fall into six patterns, and every one can be tested for or designed out before the box leaves India -

Why the same spice can pass at one border and fail at another is in same spice, three borders, and why a good sample is no promise for the bulk lot is in sample perfect, bulk not. Plant-based goods also face biosecurity checks, covered in biosecurity for natural goods.

The Indian suppliers in these records aren't villains. Most were selling a product built for another market's rules into Australia's, so your job is to tell them the rules up front and test what they send. If you want someone on the ground to vet the processor, pull samples and manage the lab work, SourcingSync (opens in a new tab) does exactly that.

India topping the failing list tells you where to look. It doesn't tell you to look away from India.