Leesha Mckenny Religious Affairs July 30, 2011

Wafer thin ... the Australian Communion bread industry is fading. Photo: Reuters

THE humble Communion wafer can become the body of Christ, many Christians believe, but changes of a profane kind might yet signal the end of Australia's artisan altar bread industry.

Two of the few NSW producers - including Ozanam Industries, the country's biggest - have bowed out, while an imported crumble-free range whose makers say is ''untouched by human hands'' is increasingly the wafer of choice in Australian churches. Ozanam, a St Vincent de Paul Society company that switched off its machines last month, said it passed on the work to the Poor Clares at the Bethlehem Monastery in Campbelltown ''as they were seeking an extra source of revenue''.

However, that decision unwittingly helped end decades of tradition for the order, which has stopped making wafers to become a stockist of Cavanagh's, the American, Catholic-affiliated company that supplies much of the world's Communion wafers.

The extra workload to supply 300 parishes, schools, religious houses and nursing homes was too much for the ageing nuns, said its abbess, Sister Catherine.

''The average age of our sisters here is 70, so the altar bread production was quite intensive - the work involved, the baking and the paste-making and all that …'' she said. ''It was a very, very sad time for us to have to give it up, after having made them for over 60 years.''

They had also discovered that some customers were switching to Cavanagh's, which churns out 20 million white, wholemeal, embossed or Christmas wafers a week. ''And we thought, 'Oh, my gosh,''' Sister Catherine said. ''It seems that most of the parishes prefer them.''

Mike Grieger, the director of Australian Church Resources, which has supplied Anglican, Catholic and Lutheran markets - ''or anyone who wants it'' - with Cavanagh bread for 25 years, said that although all wafers were just flour and water, the US wafer was a better product.

In an industry in which denominational loyalties give his competitors an edge - even if he said nuns did not always deal well with clients on the phone - the Adelaide-based Lutheran aims to never run out.

The standard 2.9-centimetre ''people's host'' was his biggest cross-denominational seller, while rich Catholic dioceses favoured the 3.8-centimetre special.

''It's a product where if someone wants it they've got to have it,'' he said, ''whereas sometimes I think that the others are a little bit inconsistent. You might ring up a monastery [to order], for instance, and they are at prayer.''

Mr Grieger now supplies hosts to all of Tasmania's Catholics through a religious order that had made its own Communion wafers until its machine broke down. ''[Parishes] probably still think that the convent makes it, when in actual fact we ship it across to them,'' he said.

While Catholics might be migrating to Cavanagh wafers, another growth market remains strictly Mr Grieger's domain. He is also the country's largest supplier of gluten-free altar breads - increasing used by coeliac Catholics and priests, in defiance of a Vatican ban.

''I know others who would come in here and would frown on us because we've even got it in our catalogue, because they would think that we are theologically incorrect,'' he said.

The Carmelite Monastery in Queensland, one of the few that still makes altar bread, supplements its small stock with Cavanagh's - bought from Cistercian monks in Victoria, who began importing it in 2000.

Nonethelss, the Carmelites are planning on stepping up, not bowing out. Sister Moira Kelly said the ageing congregation had imported a semi-automatic machine from Italy to provide affordable local bread to the small Toowoomba diocese.

Cuts would need to be made elsewhere, she said. Its Easter candle-making would stop.

''We just think its a lovely work for contemplative communities to do,'' she said. ''Our prices are much lower than the Cavanagh ones. It is important that we don't let the big companies just rule our lives.''

Not even a miracle can save Communion wafers from US hegemony