Organic food producers claim Australia and New Zealand are ‘sleepwalking towards deregulation of food labelling laws’ following a proposal by Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) to amend the definitions for ‘food produced using gene technology’ and ‘gene technology’.
FSANZ says a new Code definition for GM food is necessary to ensure regulation keeps pace with new and emerging techniques for genetic modification, collectively referred to as new breeding techniques (NBTs).
“NBTs can introduce a wide variety of genetic modifications, including changes that are like those from conventional breeding,” explained FSANZ. “This means a clear distinction between GM techniques and conventional breeding no longer exists.
“Our assessment has concluded that when a food derived using NBTs is equivalent in its characteristics to food derived through conventional breeding, it also presents the same low risk. Because of this low risk, a premarket safety assessment by FSANZ is not needed, and such food should therefore not be GM food for Code purposes.”
Peter Hislop Speers, Chair of Organic Industries of Australia Ltd says the right of Australian consumers to choose will be disempowered and organic producers will lose access to markets should the proposal go ahead.
“Certified Organic foods are chosen by consumers seeking to avoid the risk of long term adverse health outcomes which are still the subject of significant research,” he said, adding that GM deregulation of this type will compromise certified organic exports to the European Union and China.
“Overwhelmingly, overseas markets do not want GM foods, and are worried by the environmental contamination of our organic foods with GM breeds,” Mr Hislop said.
“FSANZ is set on bending to the pressure from high tech agrifood companies who want to use Australia as a bridgehead for their global plans to sneak genetically modified products into all the food we eat.
“We think this proposal is designed to confuse rather than clarify. In particular, the assessment promotes a false equivalence that NBT food is produced with an outcome that might occur using natural selection techniques. That is clearly not the case, and the onus should be on the proponent to prove the safety of every instance of GM manipulation.”