GM jury challenges FSA policy on labelling 8 April 2003
The views of the Food Standards Agency's (FSA) Citizens' Jury on GM food challenge the Agency's own policies claims Friends of the Earth. While the jury voted nine to six in favour of allowing GM food to be available in the UK, all 15 jurors called for "effective labelling and monitoring of GM foods; for example, a GM food logo to ensure that people can make a genuine choice to eat or to avoid eating GM foods."
The FSA has consistently lobbied against the full traceability and labelling regulations currently being debated by the European Parliament. The regulation proposes that all GM ingredients in food and animal feed should be labelled. The FSA support a policy of no labelling for food containing up to one per cent of GM ingredients.
"The jurors clearly share the view of millions of people across the EU that GM foods and feeds need to be properly labelled so that people can avoid eating them or feeding them to their livestock," said Friends of the Earth Real Food Campaigner, Pete Riley. "Their view challenges the FSA policy position which is for minimal labelling that would mean that the vast majority of GM food would be unlabelled. It will be interesting to see how the FSA responds and whether it will follow the example of food companies and retailers and support full information on GM food instead of pandering to the wishes of the biotech industry by allowing contamination to go unlabelled. The jury quite rightly wants monitoring of GM food - but by allowing contamination to go unlabelled monitoring for health effects in people and animals would be a nightmare."
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