Monday, 5th May 2008
Zero tolerance on GM foods makes zero sense
Genetically modified food was first sold in the UK in 1996. Californian-produced Flavr-Savr longer-life tomatoes were bought by British-based firm Zeneca, turned into a tomato paste and sold with little ado on supermarket shelves throughout the country.
The first whiff of hysteria didn’t come until a few months later when, in the wake of some very public cases of Mad Cow disease, the British people became understandably wary of the Government regulators and campaigned against the release of herbicide-resistant soya-beans.
The tabloids alarmed us with headlines about ‘Frankenstein foods’ and, as far as some people were concerned, a monster had been born.
Over the following years, a small number of GM crops were introduced into the UK and have caused no ill-effects to those who consume them. However, the EU still takes over 2 years on average to license a perfectly safe GM product. In the US the average approval time is 15 months.
Now the EU is once again in the news for delaying its approval of GM foods – two maize crops and a potato with extra starch – by passing it onto the European Food Safety Authority, causing consternation amongst those who are waiting for their authorisation.
As consumers, we do not feel the impact of such time delays. But farmers, who are falling further behind in the world market as they are forced to feed their animals more expensive non-GM foods, are feeling this delay dearly. Scottish farmers are losing on average £20 for every pig slaughtered because of rising fuel costs and lack of access to cheap feed. There is a real danger that we will soon have no UK pig industry left. In the ten years from 1996 to 2006 the UK pig herd has fallen from 7.9 to 4.9 million. We have to import more and more pork and bacon into the UK to meet consumer demand and all of it comes from animals reared to lower welfare and hygiene standards than ours. This cannot be to the public’s benefit.
On the other hand, farmers across the world are feeding their animals GM foods and, due to lower costs, selling direct to our supermarkets for a much lower price. We import vast quantities of chicken, pork, lamb and beef that have been reared on cheap GM feeds, which are outlawed in the EU. UK consumers happily munch away on this stuff while voicing their approval of ‘Zero Tolerance’ policies in respect of GMs in Europe. It makes ‘Zero’ sense!
Purists say that we must not have beef, lamb, poultry or pig meat produced with GM feed, but the end result will be that we will have lost our industry to cheaper non-EU competitors, while we will continue to import meat from animals that have been fed on precisely the same GM feed that we have denied our producers access to. This is the politics of the madhouse!
What we really need is clear labelling on products so that consumers can make an informed choice. They must know if the meat they eat has been fed on GMs so that they can make an informed choice. With rising food prices, many GM fed meat products are cheaper and this gives consumers the ability to access low cost meat, if that is what they desire.
The other major issue as far as feed is concerned is the impact of zero tolerance on non GM feed coming into the EU. When a shipload of non GM soya is being loaded in Brazil, there is a chance that a very tiny residue of GM soya could be picked up through the loading equipment at the port. When that ship later docks in the EU, if a small trace of GM soya is found the whole cargo can be turned away or, worse still, wastefully dumped at a time of food shortages.
Therefore the result of the zero tolerance regime is to reduce dramatically the amount of non GM feed coming into the EU, making that which enters even more expensive.
