Irish consumers concerned about the presence of GM ingredients will be assured by the results of a recent survey commissioned by Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) that to set out to identify foods containing GM maize and/or soya ingredients and to check for compliance with EU labelling regulations. All products sampled were within the law.
This was the third such survey undertaken by the FSAI in recent years, in compliance with the European Commission's co-ordinated programme for the Official Control of Foodstuffs for 2002.
The FSAI reports that a range of samples were taken for the survey including breakfast cereals, baby foods, snack foods, dried soya products, soya and maize flours and bakery products.
The results show that out of the 75 samples tested, 12 (16 per cent) contained GM ingredients. Nine samples were shown to contain the EU-authorised Roundup Ready soya, one contained Bt176 maize, again authorised, and the remaining two were not identified.
Current European legislation dictates that a GM label is required on the food packaging if the product contains more than 1 per cent GM material. According to the FSAI survey, none of the GM-positive samples contained more than this percentage.
On the flip side, six of the 12 foods containing GM material (50 per cent) had labels indicating that they contained no GM ingredients, with one of those also having an organic label.
Another food containing GM ingredients was labelled as organic even though EU legislation governing organic foods stipulates that GM material is not tolerated at any level in products certified as organic. The survey also revealed that a total of 17 of the 75 foods purchased had organic labels but two of those (12 per cent) were found to contain some GM ingredients.
Further discrepancies found that although GM-free type labelling was carried on 19 of the foods sampled, six of these products (32 per cent) were found to contain some level of GM ingredient. These labels could be considered to be in breach of the general European food labelling Directive which prohibits labelling or methods of labelling that could mislead the purchaser to a material degree.
So, despite the positive news on the 1 per cent threshold front, and the fact that there were absolutely no concerns found for consumer health, the FSAI warned food manufacturers that "the persistent inaccurate labelling of certain food has serious implications for consumer choice and must be addressed by the industry".
The food authority stressed that it plans to use the results of this survey for future GM food monitoring campaigns in an effort to restore consumer confidence - with the Irish seemingly as cynical as their British neighbours - in GM food labelling.