Sunday Times http://www.news.com.au/national/ Genetic food crackdown 2may99 WA could play a central role in new plans by national health authorities to crack down on the sale of illegal genetic foods. The proposal emerged on Friday during a telephone conference of senior health officials from Australia and New Zealand. WA, which is apparently further progressed in gene testing technology than other States, is understood to have volunteered at the meeting to take on responsibility for nation-wide testing. It would mean that products not registered for safety testing with the Australia New Zealand Food Authority by last Friday, and still on the shelves by May 13, are liable for prosecution. ANZFA estimates there are more than 500 food products containing genetically modified materials now on supermarket shelves. A proposed national panel of health officials will oversee the gene testing which would try to establish if foods not removed from the shelf contain non-registered genetically modified materials. A flurry of registrations was received late this week from genetic engineering companies registering materials, but it seems likely that some non registered products will remain on the shelves after the May 13 ANZFA deadline. The difficulty for health authorities will be to track these products down. In some cases even food manufacturers appear unaware that genetically modified products like soybeans, maize or canola are being used in their production processes. A spokeswoman for ANZFA warned gene companies and supermarkets that leaving unregistered products on the shelves after May 13 will be viewed seriously by both ANZFA and health authorities. WA Health Department director of environmental health, Michael Jackson, who took part in the telephone conference, said the testing procedure was required because of the difficulty of establishing whether genetically modified organisms were included in food products. Health authorities are under increasing pressure from consumer groups about the lack of labelling on food containing genetically modified ingredients. Meetings of State health ministers, scheduled for the middle of the year will consider the labelling issue. Foods affected range from frozen meals to ice cream, breads, pasta, canned and frozen seafood, soups, biscuits, cereals, yoghurt and even vitamin tablets. Bob Phelps, director of the Australian Gene Ethics Network, said consumers wanting to avoid products, which contained genetically modified products, should check packets for ingredients likely to be genetically engineered. These included imported corn or maize, cottonseed oil, hydrolysed vegetable protein, lecithin (E322), margarine, shortening, soya ingredients and vegetable oil. ************************************************************************* This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
