GM contamination found in 'health' foods
But few were prepared for findings at the University of Glamorgan in Wales that 10 out of 25 organic or health food products tested positive for traces of GM ingredients, even though eight of the positive samples had been labelled 'GM free' or 'organic'.
Professor Mark Partridge and Professor Denis Murphy, from the biotechnology unit at the University, tested 25 products containing soya, using an EU approved method for detecting traces of GM ingredients.
Full findings of their study will be published in the April issue of the British Food Journal (Vol 106 (3) 2004).
Four of the products that showed traces of GM were above the Soil Association's limit for organic food, including one vegetarian sausage mix which contained 0.7% GM soya. (The Soil Association is the UK's leading campaigning and certification organisation for organic food and farming.)
Professor Murphy said, "Given that GM soya production is set to increase even more over the coming years, it is difficult to see how 'GM free' labels can be justified, unless there is much more rigorous testing of such foods."
As trade barriers come down slowly, more and more foodstuffs in the EU will contain ingredients from the 60 million hectares of GM crops already grown around the world. The USA, Argentina and Canada are expected to lead a 100% increase in worldwide GM cropping by 2010.
Meanwhile, GM acreage will hardly increase in Europe, outside of the 58,000 hectares of insect protected GM maize in Spain, and small areas of experimental crops in some other member states.
How 'GM free' foods can be protected from the worldwide avalanche of GM crops will be an interesting topic for Entransfood, the talking shop set up by the European Commission to find ways of introducing agricultural biotechnology products in a way that is largely acceptable to European society.
Entransfood includes 65 partners from 13 different European countries, including representatives from academia, regulatory agencies, food manufacturers, retailers and consumer groups.
The Entransfood project has already said that existing test methods for safety assessment of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are efficient, and that GM foods that have passed the test are as safe and nutritious as plant-derived foods. However, it has called for further improvement of test methods, and development of methods to predict the allergenicity of food components. Entransfood says EU food labelling difficulties are unavoidable, particularly when it comes to traceability of foods originating from or containing GM crops across countries and businesses.
On the subject of unintended effects and gene transfer, Entransfood has emphasised that there is no indication that unintended effects are more likely to occur in GM foods, or that there is any inherent risk in the transfer of DNA between organisms, since DNA is not toxic.
It did, however, call for further development and validation of profiling methods before they are used in routine risk assessment.
Entransfood also recommends that the use of bacterial DNA in elaborating GM plants should be kept to a minimum, to reduce the risk of gene transfer to the microbial population in the gut.
Finally, Entransfood has recommended the creation of an evaluation and discussion platform combining a range of diverse perspectives on new food technology, to formalise public engagement and consultation in the GM debate.
