Australia and NZ Agree on Standard for Genetically Modified Food

Associate Health Minister, Hon Tuariki Delamere, said tonight Australia and New Zealand had agreed on a food standard common to both countries, which will provide the most cost-effective way of regulating the sale and consumption of foods produced using gene technology (GMF's).

Speaking after a meeting of the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Council in Sydney, Mr Delamere said the adoption of Standard A18 - which refers to genetically modified foods - means that GMF's must now be assessed for their safety for human consumption and listed in a table before they can be sold.

"The standard also provides for the labelling of GMF's that are substantially different from existing conventional counterparts (i.e., where they are different in a property such as taste, in nutrition or in use.)"

Mandatory labelling of GMF's that are substantially equivalent has not been agreed to at this time. The Ministers are waiting on further information from international bodies and will consider this matter further at the next meeting of the Council in six months' time.

Mr Delamere welcomed the agreement reached by the Council today. While he appreciated the wishes of consumers to have clear information concerning the content of food, he said the hardline purist calls for all GMF's of whatever kind to be labelled was wildly impractical.

"In view of the multitude of additives that are in food today, the compliance costs food importers and manufacturers would face from meeting a blanket regulation, and New Zealand's international obligations to its trading partners and the World Trade Organisation, the position reached today provides a sensible solution.

"It is naive to imagine that every food manufacturer who, for example, gets a thickening agent or sauce from overseas, would be able to guarantee absolutely that those additives don't contain genetically-modified material.

"The compliance costs of meeting such a demand would be huge and would inevitably impact on the price of food to ordinary New Zealanders.

"This new Standard agreed to today strikes a sensible middle course between open slather and heavyhanded regulation in the matter of the sale and labelling of GMF's," said the Minister.