Safe Food Queensland have put up a warning page on their website, warning consumers, amongst other things,

The main safety risks are contamination with microbes that cause disease, chemicals such as agricultural and cleaning chemicals and physical contaminants such as glass, and stones.  

Some native plants are poisonous, for example, the fruit of some Solanum species and bracken fern tips and at least two Acacia species. Some require processing or cooking to be safe (e.g. some nuts), while others are tolerated in small amounts but cause adverse reactions in large amounts (e.g. unripe fruits). 

You can read the whole article here.

.

The Bushfoods Starter Kit on CD (very reasonably priced at $19 incl postage) is an invaluable resource for newcomers, students and people are simply interested in our native foods.

I have put up the contents here. and a sample section (Fruits A-C) here.

You can order one via email (sammyringer - at- bigpond.com) or phone (07 5494 3812)

Yes - I will get on-line ordering soon!!

I come across a number of bushfood courses being offered but this one was interesting:

Bushtucker Plants BHT 328

Yup - it's a UK distance education body!

Tuesday, 04/05/2010

The Australian Native Food Industry is calling for consumers to integrate more bush foods into their home cooking.

Read more.

Native Food Conference in Adelaide

There will be a Native Food Conference on Monday 3 May in Adelaide at the National Wine Centre, which will be held during the annual Tasting Australia event.

Don't miss this opportunity to meet people and learn more about what's happening nationally in native food industry development and research. Three of your fellow SANFA members (Linda Hoffmann, Andrew Fielke and Maarten Ryder) plus two other ANFIL members are involved in organizing the conference.

Feast for the Senses opportunity for members:

Immediately before the Native Food conference, on Saturday 1st and Sunday 2nd May, the Feast for the Senses weekend will be held at Elder Park in Adelaide. ANFIL, through Andrew Fielke, is arranging for several catering businesses to serve native food based dishes in a marquee at this event.  A substantial discount has been negotiated for the space. SANFA are considering taking up a small area in the marquee and would like to invite any members interested in marketing and selling their processed native food ingredients to join in.  The charge for this is still being worked out at this stage.  If you are interested in this opportunity, can you contact Maarten Ryder as soon as possible? (urgently, in fact!)

Tasting Australia stipulate that goods for sale at Feast for the Senses must also be available in the dishes served on the day - the chances are your ingredient is already on the menu, but we do need to check this with Andrew Fielke in each case.

Thanks & regards

Maarten Ryder

President SANFA

Tel 0409 696 360

The inaugural ANFIL native food conference, Wild Flavours of Australia, will be held as part of the Tasting Australia event in Adelaide, South Australia from 26 April through to 6 May 2010.
Australian Native Food Industry Limited
It will be held at the National Wine Centre in Adelaide on Monday 3rd May 2010.

More info at ANFIL

Well not quite everything - but I found a website with a large number of pdf files on the Quandong - all available for download.

You'll find it here.