GM food deal From AAP 28jul00 9.30am (AEST) NEW Zealand and Australian health ministers agreed to a mandatory system of labelling for all food which contained genetically modified ingredients, Victorian Health Minister John Thwaites said today. Mr Thwaites, speaking from the meeting in Wellington, told Melbourne ABC radio, that Prime Minister John Howard's push to limit labelling to foods with more than one per cent of genetically modified product had failed. "Our position has prevailed and the Commonwealth has conceded on the key issue on whether there should be a general threshhold before labelling is required," Mr Thwaites said. "Mr Howard was wanting to have a situation where you could have up to one per cent of food to be genetically modified and not have to be labelled. "We believed that didn't make sense. "The Commonwealth has now conceded on that so if there's genetically modified food in a product you buy then it has to be labelled." Health ministers began debating in December 1998 a trans-Tasman food standard on labelling GM-derived foods. Before now they had agreed they wanted a comprehensive regime under which all food with more than 0.1 per cent of GM ingredients should be identified. But Mr Howard has in recent months called for one per cent threshold to reduce compliance costs for industry. The meeting was attended by the 10 health ministers from Australia and New Zealand. Mr Thwaites said consumers had a right to know what was in the food they ate. "If we don't label food properly then consumers will then get unnecessarily fearful and suspicious that food may contain genetically modified product," he said. "The experience around the world is that consumers are becoming more and more aware of this issue." He said the GM labelling would put Australia and New Zealand on a par with Europe. -- ********************************** 'Click' to protect the rainforest: Make the Rainforest Site your homepage! http://www.therainforestsite.com/ ********************************** ------------------------------------------------------ RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 and is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/ To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED], and in the body of the message, include the words: unsubscribe announce or click here mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20announce 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." RecOzNet2 is archived for members @ http://www.mail-archive.com/recoznet2%40paradigm4.com.au/
