Labelling

This will be my last post on this blog for a while. I have a lot of other things happening in my life at the moment that need my full attention, but I may come back to this some time in the near future.

To finish everything off, I thought I would look at the controversy surrounding the labelling of GM food and food products.

I can completely understand why people would want food that is or contains genetically modified components to be labelled. It allows for everyone to make their own choice as to whether or not they will eat GM food and food products (here again I would like to stress that GM foods are safe for human consumption, assuming that they have undergone the testing required by their governments).

So below are the current labelling rules in place for Australia/New Zealand, US, Canada, and Europe

Australia/New Zealand - in 2001 it was ruled that "any food, food ingredient, or processing aid produced using gene technology and containing novel DNA and/or novel protein or having altered characteristics to be labelled as 'genetically modified'."

http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/scienceandeducation/scienceinfsanz/updates/updates2004/anzgmfoodlabellingst2461.cfm

US - From what I can find, the US position on GM food is that mandatory labelling is not necessary because food produced in GM ways is no different to food produced in 'traditional' ways (this is potentially one of the smartest things to ever come out of the US, and I mean that with absolutely no offence intended to anyone from the US - this statement is just so fantastically correct)

http://gefreebc.wordpress.com/2010/05/12/canada-codex-gm-labeling/

Canada - From what I can tell from the above article, the Canadian government aren't quite sure yet which way they want to go - seems like they see the sense in labelling, but also understand why people might not want to enforce labelling

Europe - Similar rules to Australia/New Zealand