A 50-year-old Australian was brought to court on Monday after police charged her with damaging the fruit of a strawberry by sewing her sewing needles in a crisis that sparked one of the country's biggest food scandals.
Australia's strawberry industry, worth $ 116 million, was seriously shocked in September after nearly 200 complaints of stitching needles in strawberries and other fruit.
A number of supermarkets pulled fruit out of the shelves as consumers played it, forcing some farmers to stop producing it amid warnings of widespread bankruptcy.
Australian police said on Monday they had charged a woman named Mei Ottrine with seven counts of damage, the first in the case.
"This may be one of the toughest investigations I've ever been a part of," Queensland police investigator John Walker told reporters.
The police stated that the defendant was a former employee of one of the affected companies, indicating that the woman might have damaged the company.
Women face up to 10 years' imprisonment if convicted, after the conservative Australian government toughened the sentence to contain the crisis.
Wacker said police received 186 complaints of fruit damage, including 15 false complaints. False complaints are a crime in Australia.
Strawberries welcomed the accusations but blamed the crisis on social media.
"Social media has raised this crisis and the real victims are strawberry farmers, farmers and other fruit exporters to some extent," the Queensland Farmers' Union said in a statement.
Queensland is Australia's largest strawberry producing area and is particularly vulnerable to a sustained decline in market performance.
Prime Minister Anastasia Balice said on Tuesday that her government would allocate 1 million Australian dollars (722,000 US dollars) to help farmers cross the crisis this season.
