Consumer & Organic Interests Challenge U.S. Draft Position on Codex Labeling for GM Products
A coalition of groups representing farmers, public health, environmental, and organic food interests has submitted a comment to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) seeking changes to the draft position on labeling genetically modified (GM) products that the U.S. Codex delegate plans to bring to the May 3-7, 2010, meeting of the Codex Committee on Food Labeling.
The coalition calls for the U.S. delegate to support “a Codex document that simply states that countries can adopt different approaches to labeling of GM/GE foods, in line with existing Codex guidance.” According to the April 20 letter, the current U.S. position opposing that document “could potentially create significant problems for food producers in the US who wish to indicate that their products contain no GE ingredients, including on organic food, where genetic engineering is a prohibited method.”
The signatories, including the Consumers Union, Union of Concerned Scientists, Food & Water Watch, Center for Food Safety, Cornucopia Institute, R-CALF USA, and Sierra Club Genetic Engineering Action Team, contend that the U.S. position is a carryover from the previous administration and is inconsistent with USDA organic rules that give organic producers the leeway to label their foods as GM free. They state, “The US should not try to solve the problem of consumer rejection of GM/GE foods in other countries by trying to force bodies like Codex to adopt the view that there are no differences between GM/GE foods and other foods, something which is contrary to scientific fact, USDA organic rules, and existing FDA policy allowing voluntary labeling.”
The draft U.S. position expresses a preference that the Codex labeling committee abandon the effort to adopt an international standard on the issue, claiming that the committee “has spent nearly two decades on this subject without reaching consensus.” According to the U.S. draft, the committee has discontinued work on issues in the past “where there were fundamental differences among member countries,” citing as examples “vegetarian” and “natural” labeling. Barring abandonment, the United States expresses the view that GM/GE labeling would create “an erroneous impression” that “the labeled food is in some way different from or less safe than a comparable, unlabeled non-GM/GE food.”
