Food manufacturers are being warned that they need to spend money on tracing where ingredients come from before the commercial release of genetically modified foods is allowed.
Dr Lyn Davies, a marketing specialist with AgriQuality New Zealand, issued some strong warnings when she addressed food industry representatives at a GM summit in Wellington.
Davies told representatives that a strict traceability systems for food items could be the key to ensuring there is always a market for New Zealand food.
Compulsory labelling of Genetically Modified food sold in New Zealand will begin on the 7th December.
The exemptions to this include foods refined to the level that they no longer contain DNA, some processing aids and food additives, and food items that have less than 1 per cent of GM content.
Items already on the shelf are also excluded.
Being able to accurately tell consumers that food items do or do not contain GM will be complicated and it remains to be seen how far food producers will go to find out exactly where a particular ingredient has come from.
But finding out this information, says Davies, could make all the difference to New Zealand keeping its export markets.
Davies says that following a string of food scares in Europe such as BSE and dioxin contamination that it is highly likely food traceability will become a big issue in the future.
With 90 per cent of New Zealand's agricultural and horticultural products destined for export, Davies says if exporters want to maintain their position in the international food market they must spend money on traceability and verification systems.
But Brenda Cuttress from the Grocery Manufacturer's Association says traceability on food items with several ingredients would be prohibitively expensive. "Consumers just want to know that the food they are eating is safe and manufactured to a high standard, which New Zealand food is," Cuttress says.
With the GM labelling regime just around the corner, Davies says it is likely many food companies will be relying on information from their suppliers that ingredients do not contain any GM. However, there is no certification system that can confirm such claims.
Annette Campbell, who represents the Baking Society, says that the baking industry has been making a huge effort to ensure that labelling of GM foods will not be an issue.
Campbell says that the labelling of GM foods will not be half as interesting as the labelling of extensive quantitative and nutritional information that will need to be on food products from the end of next year.
She says people will quickly discover that quite often when something tastes delicious it is because the fat and sugar content is rather high.
Campbell says that GM food labelling will get consumers used to looking for such tasty bits of information.