The strawberry contamination scare in Australia, which has caused supermarkets to recall brands and farmers to dump fruit, has spread to all six of the country’s states, police have said. The supermarket chains Coles and Aldi had pulled strawberries from their shelves across Australia except in Western Australia, and on Monday police in that state said a suspected case had been identified there.

A man in the town of York reported to police that he had found a needle in a sink after washing strawberries. The incident came after a seven-year-old girl in South Australia state found a needle in a Western Australia-grown strawberry on Saturday. A 62-year-old woman was caught putting a needle into a banana in Mackay, central Queensland, in what is believed to have been a copycat act.

Neil Handasyde, president of the Strawberry Growers Association of Western Australia, said growers had received requests from retailers and insurance companies to scan fruit for needles. “As an industry, we are sure that [the needles] are not coming from the farm, but we’re trying to get confidence into consumers that when they buy … strawberries, that there isn’t going to be anything other than strawberries in there and they’re safe to eat,” he told ABC. “[We] are looking at lots of different ways of tackling this issue. There’s been metal detectors purchased and tamper-proof packaging looked at.”(theguardian)…[+]