- CropLife strongly supports requirements for accurate and informative product labels that communicate information that is relevant to health, safety and nutrition.
- Labelling of GM ingredients is a consumer choice issue, not a safety one. Governments wishing to implement such systems must carefully weigh up the importance of providing consumer information on the one hand with the associated costs and practicability on the other.
- For any labelling provisions to be enforceable in relation to GM foods, they should be supported by reliable, validated methodologies for detecting the presence of transgenic protein or DNA.
- Workable labelling threshold levels for the presence of GM material in food, feed and food ingredients allow the seed and plant biotech industry, the farming community and other businesses in the food chain to ensure that the consumer is provided with a real choice.
Product labelling has two purposes:
- to identify for consumers the content of products, especially where there may be an identified danger from the use of that product, such as the presence of an allergen (generally a regulatory matter)
- as a means by which consumers can be provided with choice (most often product claims are a market place activity).While governments are free to make decisions in both regards, it is important that these two purposes are not confused.
International rules for the labelling of GM foods vary considerably between nations. Some countries are in the process of discussing legislation, some have had mandatory laws in place for several years, and others such as Canada have opted for a voluntary regime. A summary of different labelling regimes can be found here.
CropLife strongly supports requirements for accurate and informative product labels that communicate information that is relevant to health, safety and nutrition.
And while we understand that governments are also free to introduce labelling regimes for consumer choice, we oppose any wording that may cause confusion between the very different issues of informed consumer choice and “consumer health". Labelling for consumer choice is not a safety issue. Wording which suggests otherwise runs contrary to the evidence from the thorough safety assessment that foods derived from modern biotechnology products have undergone. There is no evidence that those stringently evaluated products, widely grown and widely consumed throughout the world, have any ill effect on human health. Plant biotechnology is a tool used to breed seeds which then grow to produce agricultural commodities like any others.
Consumers should be well informed about the types of foods available and free to choose which they buy. Governments wishing to implement product labelling in the interests of ‘consumer choice’ must also carefully weigh up the importance of providing consumer information on the one hand with the associated costs and practicality on the other.
As such, we have supported the efforts of Codex Alimentarius’ Committee on Food Labelling to introduce guidelines for labelling GM products, and are therefore disappointed that it has not been possible to agree on wording relating to labelling for ‘consumer health’. However, these Guidelines have been under consideration for approximately twelve years with no consensus on either provisions for method of production labelling or even the structure of the document (separation of end-use labelling from method of production labelling). CropLife has therefore now taken the position that work should be suspended, until such time as an international consensus on the labelling of foods derived from modern biotechnology appears to be possible. Until such a decision is made, CropLife will continue to monitor the Committee’s progress and to have direct involvement in its working groups and meetings.