Reports from Australia claim most of the expense will be passed onto consumers.

The country's food agency, the Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ), looked into costs related to adopting recommendations to improve country-of-origin labels for both fresh and packaged foods.

More than 300 submissions on the draft changes have been lodged, including calls for the origins of all ingredients to be listed, reports Australia's ABC News.

Lydia Buchtmann from FSANZ estimates the change would lead to considerable price rises for food.

"It's estimated that in Australia it will be 0.1 to 2 per cent of the total food turnover," the news channel cites Buchtmann.

she said. If there were major changes to our proposals, such as labelling of individual ingredients, which meant every product would have to be re-labelled and re-labelled quite often, then of course it would be greatly increased, she added.