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Codex Alimentarius and labeling
May 1998 Codex Alimentarius is responsible for the suggestion of international rules concerning Food Policy. It is an organization within the United Nations, with delegates from all member nations. Although it has no authority to dictate national regulations, its decisions are in practice of decisive importance. This is because the World Trade Organization (WTO) has decided to base its free trade policy on the decisions of Codex. This means, that if a certain rule is agreed upon by Codex Alimentrius, any country that does not follow it, will be charged by WTO for obstructing free international trade. The fines are so heavy that no country can afford to pay them. United States, which is the country with greatest interests in Genetic Engineering of food, has been lobbying for an international deregulation of labeling in cooperation with a few other countries. Its proposition was turned down by a great majority last year. Since then, the Biotechnology companies have been lobbying hard to change the opinion of Codex. In May 1998, there was a new meeting trying to settle the food labeling issue:
The meeting tried to find a compromise between two views on the issue. After many hours of discussion the Codex Committee for food labeling failed to agree about mandatory labelling of genetically engineered food. The European Union, India and most Asian countries demand that all genetically-modified foods should be labeled. United States, Brazil, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, and some other countries favoured very limited labelling requirements. The Committee arrived at an agreement to recommend to label allergens in genetically engineered foods. However, it only includes known allergens, that is such that may turn up in the GE-food because they are present in either the donor or the recipient of the inserted gene. This rule does not protect consumers from unexpected allergens that may arise due to the manipulation of genes (see "The reasons why hazardous substances may be created"). In practice the recommendation of Codex does not add anything significant to already existing rules. Codex now will gather more comments on the issue and will bring the topic up for discussion at their meeting next year. Consumers International's Director General Julian Edwards: "At this rate, it will be well into the next millennium, if ever, until Codex develops standards for labelling of genetically engineered foods. After years of discussion in Codex, consumers still don't have the information they need and meanwhile, month by month, new genetically engineered foods are being introduced into the marketplace."
Our message was on purpose brief, as the delegates are heavily swamped with information. The idea was to make them aware of the fact that what really needs to be considered is a moratorium on GE-foods and not how to label them. Therefore they obtained our Declaration along with a brief message: "Genetically Engineered food represents a potentially serious threat to the Health of mankind and to the Environment". The message was in English, French, German, Russian, and Spanish. Comment to the Codex Alimentarius conference The Biotech lobby has been working hard on making the member countries accept labeling. It is therefore encouraging that many important countries still demanded mandatory labeling at the conference. It seems that the policy of the proponents is to postpone a negative decision, hoping that continued lobbying will increase the number of countries in favour of no labeling. The awareness about the problems with Genetic Engineering of Food has been quite low in many countries, especially outside the English speaking sphere as much of the debate has been in English. This is the reason why we are now campaigning in major world languages in order to raise the awareness of the public as well as the politicians about the hazards with GE-food. "Genetically Engineered Food - Safety Problems" News Introductory articles Health hazards Environmental hazards Global issues Safety issues Alternatives to GE FAQ About us What You can do Membership E-mail How to sponsor us
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