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News 2nd July 2002 EU proposes strict labelling of food with GMO ingredients The European Parliament
will be voting on tough new EU-wide rules on the labelling of products
containing GM ingredients tomorrow. Conservative MEPs believe that only
products that can be proved by testing to contain GMOs should be labelled. Conservative Health Spokesman in the European Parliament, John Bowis MEP, said ahead of the vote tomorrow: "Conservative MEPs will be voting for a common sense regime that combines sensible labelling with informed consumer choice. That means that only those products that are proven by testing to contain GMOs should be labelled. It also means sticking to the Commission's suggestion that products should be allowed to contain up to 1% of GM material before being labelled. "There has been far too much tampering by the Greens and Liberals. They have made any directive completely unworkable in practise and will merely encourage fraud as a way round their over-prescriptive proposals." Notes: In a European Parliament joint-debate on food and feed safety today, MEPs Antonios Trakatellis and Karin Scheele are presenting two reports on GMOs following a majority of the Environment Commitee's Members pushing for stricter rules on the labelling of food or feed that contain ingredients derived from genetically-modified organisms. In the Trakatellis Report, amendments call for measures to be put in place to combat the 'uncontrolled spread of GMO products so as to stop the accidental presence of GMOs in food or feed. A controversial amendment demands that animals fed with GM feed should also fall under the traceability umbrella. Scheele's report is mainly focused against the establishment, as envisaged in the original Commission proposal, of a threshold above which food or feed accidentally contaminated with non-authorised GMOs should be labelled. |
