Food labelling review is a con
22 April 2010The Review of Food Labelling is set to further weaken our lax labelling laws in the interests of transnational corporations that dominate global trade in foods, by using the rhetoric of less regulatory burden on business.
The Review received 6,000 submissions in its first round last November.Country of Origin labelling and the lack of labels on genetically manipulated (GM) foods were often raised. The Review’s issues paper claims most GM food is labelled – despite exemptions for vegetable oils, starches and sugars; food processing aids and additives; restaurant meals; meat, milk, eggs, honey etc. from animals fed GM feed; plus a 1% threshold for ‘accidental’ GM contamination. In practice, most foods made using GM techniques are unlabelled.
Flagging its hidden agenda, the inquiry’s paper also says: “caution needs to be exercised in order that the development and application of these and other innovative technologies (GM; nanotechnology; irradiation; etc.) are not unduly inhibited.”
Putting new, untried technologies ahead of shoppers’ right to know how food was made and ahead of food safety is unethical. GM foods are among those new ‘Foods Requiring Pre-Market Clearance’ in Standard 1.5. Download the standards here.
Novel, GM and irradiated foods must undergo FSANZ pre-market health and safety assessments (not testing) as they contain materials and/or manufacturing processes that have no history of safe use in the human food supply. They should also be labelled, as their novelty and the under-developed safety science, means these foods pose unique risks, not associated with foods that have longer histories of safe use. Australia’s food regulator, Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ), acknowledges lack of certainty about the products of new food technologies, by often amending their scientific data sheets on these foods. Labelling satisfies shoppers' right to know how food was made as well as what's in it.
Codex international food standards require irradiated foods to be labelled with the process of production and this creates a precedent for the products of other new technologies and processes - such as GM and nanotechnology - to also be labelled. Weak labelling is also a restraint of trade that adversely affects free markets, as providing full information to all parties to a transaction is a prerequisite for markets to operate optimally.
So-called free marketeers should embrace, not oppose, full labelling. Scientific American (August 2009) and Nature Biotechnology (volume 27 number 10 October 2009) say the jury is still out on GM crop impacts and GM food safety as GM patent owners refuse to supply the seed and approvals for independent research and do not allow negative evidence to be published. The onus is on GM companies to show their products are safe and to label them. They fail both of these tests.