The Sydney Morning Herald http://www.smh.com.au/news/9903/13/text/pageone8.html Label gene food, says jury Date: 13/03/99 By DEBORAH SMITH After deliberating through the night until dawn, a citizen's jury at Australia's inaugural consensus conference brought down a unanimous report yesterday recommending that all genetically modified (GM) foods be labelled. The 14-member lay panel also called, in effect, for a short moratorium on any new commercial releases of GM foods in Australia, or the importation of unlabelled ones, until a better regulatory system was in place. It criticised the present regulatory bodies, including the Australia and New Zealand Food Authority which assesses the safety of new GM foods, for not serving community interests. It said: "The decision- making process is currently inaccessible and open to bias." It recommended a new statutory authority be established to oversee the introduction of gene technology, and that its deliberations be public. "The speed at which GM organisms have been developed and introduced by multinational companies and the scientific community has left many people completely unaware of and uninvolved in the process," the panel said. The conference, convened by the Australian Museum, is a method used increasingly overseas for citizens to influence government policy on contentious technologies. After cross-examining 13 expert witnesses, the lay jury concluded that the possible benefits of gene technology in the food chain ranged from longer shelf life for produce to reducing world hunger. "But the potential hazards are largely unknown in the long term," it said. It rejected as too narrow the scientific definition of a GM food as substantially equivalent to conventional foods if it was indistinguishable in chemical composition, flavour and other physical properties. "Comprehensive labelling is the only way to ensure that health, religious, moral and ethical food choices are placed solely in the hands of each individual consumer," the jury said. In December, health ministers voted six to four in favour of labelling all genetically engineered foods, but there is pressure from ANZFA for some refined GM foods, such as vegetable oils, to be exempt from labelling. The Government, which has said it will establish a gene technology office, is considering the best way to regulate gene technology. The panel recommended that to ensure the highest standards of public health, regulation of GM issues should not be moved to the agriculture portfolio. A spokesman for the Australian Conservation Foundation, Mr Bob Phelps, director of the Gene-Ethic Network, said the lay panel had done a fabulous job. "It was democracy in action," he said. The executive director of the Australian Food and Grocery Council, Mr Mitchell Hooke, said the report highlighted the Government's failure to inform consumers about the uses and benefits of gene technology, and the regulatory regime governing its safe commercialisation. "Whilst the Government dithers, scope for misinformation is rife," he said. Mr Mitchell said any labelling of GM foods had to be done in a meaningful, practical and, if required by law, enforceable way. This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorised use, copying or mirroring is prohibited. ************************************************************************* 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
