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GM FOOD: HEALTH MONITORING IN CHAOS

02 Sep 1999

Earlier this year, Friends of the Earth revealed Government plans to use data from supermarket loyalty cards to track patterns of GM food consumption and relate them to possible health effects. All the major supermarkets responded to our story by stating that they would not co-operate with the proposal. At its meeting today, ACNFP agreed to carry out an 18 month feasibility study into the how consumption of GM food could be related to possible health effects. But the Committee conceded that any small or subtle health effects could be missed by such a broad study. (A copy of the ACNFP paper is available from FOE Press Office)

Several members of the Committee made reference to the possible use of supermarket loyalty cards with the holders permission. Supermarket Chief Executives may be subject to “Ministerial approaches” to seek their co-operation in providing sales data on a regional basis. Health data likely to be used include cancer and mortality rates, birth related events and GP monitoring data.

Commenting, Pete Riley, Senior Campaigner on Biotechnology at Friends of the Earth,said:

“The ACNFP don't seem to have noticed that nearly all major supermarkets and food manufacturers have decided not to stock GM food.

What the public want is GM-free food, not woolly proposals to monitor any health effects after GM foods have already been eaten. Post marketing monitoring is not a substitute for proper research before GM food is released into the human food chain. The Government seems content to use the UK population in an uncontrolled experiment. Supermarkets seem more in touch with public opinion than these so called safety watch dogs”

NOTES TO EDITORS
[1]    A sub committee of the ACNFP met at MAFF on Thursday 2nd September at 10.30. The meeting was chaired by ACNFP chair Janet Bainbridge. The group originally proposed using supermarket loyalty cards to track GM food health effects in March 1998. The latest meeting was to review new proposals after supermarkets rejected the idea in earlier this year.

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