The risk of fraudulent mislabelling

Grocer, Oct 19, 2002 by Geoffrey Podger

from Geoffrey Podger, chief executive, Food Standards Agency

SIR; Soil Association director Patrick Holden asserts that the Food Standards Agency's position on GM product labelling is `nonsensical' (Letters, October 5).

He claims that since the organic sector relies on traceability systems to guarantee that food has been produced organically, a similar system will work for GM derived ingredients.

This, however, ignores the differences between the organic and commodity crop sectors where much of the GM production is concentrated.

The scale of the commodity crop sector is orders of magnitude greater than the organic sector and involves very long and complex supply chains, the majority of which lie outside the EU.

Additionally the Commission's proposals only require products to be labelled as GM if they are supplied with documents indicating their origin from a GM source.

Bearing in mind the perceived stigma associated with food products containing GM, there is a very real risk of fraudulent mislabelling, and because GM derivatives cannot be tested to determine authenticity, this fraud would be virtually impossible to prove.

The Food Standards Agency disagrees with the draft EC proposals for labelling of GM foods because they are impractical and unenforceable.

We are calling for labelling rules based on the detectable presence of GM DNA or protein in food so that consumers are not given assurance that cannot be delivered.