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Genetically-modified food labelling scheme agreed
The current public and political debate about genetically-modified foods began with the development, by USA company Monsanto, of a modified soya bean plant which was resistant to the herbicide glyphosate, marketed by Monsanto under the trade name Roundup.
The Roundup Ready soya beans were first grown commercially in the USA in 1996, accounting for 2% of the national crop. In the USA, there was little public or pressure group reaction to the introduction of the genetically-modified soya beans and the US agricultural community rapidly switched over to them.
In the spring of 1996 the EU granted regulatory approval for the importation of processing of Roundup Ready soya beans. Although this was opposed by green campaigning groups, they had not been able to generate a significant level of public or political pressure against the approval. However, in the months following this decision, the main environmental groups started campaigning energetically for a system of labelling to identify any food product containing any ingredient from a genetically-modified plant. They were soon joined by consumer groups across Europe.
One of the main points of dispute was that USA soya producers, supported and encouraged by Monsanto, refused to separate the genetically-modified from the original soya beans. Since the USA is Europe's main supplier of soya, and soya or soya-derived ingredients are found in a very wide range of foods, this meant that a very large number of food products purchased in Europe would contain a genetically-engineered ingredient. This aggressive stance by the US agencies gave the European campaigning groups a powerful argument which they lost no chance to use.
By the time the first shipment of Roundup Ready beans arrived in Europe in November 1996, Greenpeace had elevated the campaign to one of their top three priorities. A group of Greenpeace activists blocked the cargo vessel from docking at Rotterdam Harbour. By January, the level of public protest and political pressure from the European Parliament forced the Commission to put further imports of Roundup Ready beans on hold for a while, to let them address how the food products derived from the beans should be labelled.
The EC Novel Foods and Novel Food Ingredients Regulations had been under discussion between the Commission and European Parliament for some time. In April 1997, the Commission announced that they would amend these regulations to require labelling of foods made from genetically-modified ingredients. However, it proved very difficult to agree the details of exactly how this should be done.
In May 1997, representatives of several US agencies visited the EU to argue against the proposed labelling regulations. They threatened that, if the EU implemented a requirement to label food produced from genetically-modified ingredients, they would bring an action under World Trade Organisation rules which forbid the imposition of trade barriers between 'like' products. Under the WTO definition of 'like' products, the method of manufacture in not relevant. The USA government argued that a mandatory labelling requirement would deter consumers from buying the products and thus act as a barrier to trade.
During 1997, the debate intensified with approval being sought to import a number of other genetically-modified crops into the EU. Some countries took unilateral action and banned some of these imports claiming they had evaluated them to represent a risk to human and animal health, because they contained antibiotic resistance genes.
The labelling scheme being proposed by the European Commission would have required that foods prepared from the mixed consignments of soya to be labelled that they 'may contain' genetically modified ingredients. The green pressure groups wanted a much more rigorous scheme using the wording 'This product contains' and covering every product which contained oil or lecithin derived from the mixed soya consignments. This would include 60% of all processed foods sold in the EU. As a compromise some European countries proposed that the 'This product contains' wording should be used but that it should only be applied to foods where scientific tests could detect DNA or protein from genetically modified beans. However, the high cost of the scientific tests, which had only been developed very recently, caused other countries and the Commission to resist this proposal.
The mechanism within the EU under which these regulations were being debated required a unanimous objection by all 15 members to block the Commission's proposal. Three member states were unwilling to object because it would lead to a labelling regulation based on scientific tests. If a unanimous objection was not made by the end of May, the Commission had the power to adopt the regulation on its own. However, during its Presidency of the EU, the UK brokered a deal between the member states and the Commission. Just before the deadline, agreement was reached on a scheme requiring mandatory labelling of food shown to contain genetically modified soya or maize by DNA and protein testing. The 'This product contains' wording will be used, but there will be a list of products which will be exempt from the regulations. Soya oil and lecithin, which do not contain detectable amounts of modified DNA or protein will be on this list. The regulations will only apply to modified soya and maize at first, but it is expected that this will set the standard for the labelling of other food products.
At the time that this agreement was reached, Monsanto shifted its position on the issue, apologising for the heavy-handed way in which they had sought to introduce the Roundup Ready bean into Europe. Monsanto adopted a new stance with a public communication programme aimed at providing consumers and policy-makers with a range of information, including opposing views, about genetically-modified foods.
A strategy based on public information and marketing may be the way forward on this issue. Sales tests in the UK, by the Agrochemical company Zeneca, have shown that when the public were presented with clearly-labelled genetically modified tomato paste, along with balanced customer information leaflets, the modified product out-sold the more expensive conventional tomato paste.