CYPRUS could soon be European leaders in the labelling of GM foods in supermarkets after the cabinet approved a bill to place GM foods on separate shelves.
This bill is on the agenda for discussion in parliament today, and Green party chairman George Perdikis, who has been pushing for tighter GM regulation, is optimistic that it will be approved before the elections in May.
The timing of the bill is significant for the outcome of the bill, because voters’ attitudes towards GM foods could count for more than politicians’ vested corporate interests.
Perdikis said: “(today) the proposal is on the agenda to force the authorities to take a position on the issue.”
Referring to the fiasco in 2005, when the US ‘unofficially’ pressured parliament to stop such a bill passing, because it would “damage US-Cyprus relations” Perdikis said: “I hope that it will not happen in the same way as it happened last time. I don’t think it will – Parliament is completely against GM food for health reasons.”
The latest Eurobarometer poll on GM foods, published in 2010, shows that substantially more Europeans see GM food as not offering benefits, as unsafe, as inequitable and as worrying now than they did in 2005.
Asked about the risks of GM, ecologist and Green Party foreign affairs officer Melina Menelaou said: “The whole thing is absurd. We are guinea pigs in a huge open experiment. It is hard to say what the outcome will be because there are so many factors involved – it is not like in a controlled scientific experiment.”
The potential effects of widespread GM use go beyond just human health. Menelaou said that they could have a profound effect on the environment: “The effects on the environment could be huge – to biodiversity, to the soil and to the insect populations.”
Whatever the truth about their risks, Menelaou’s concerns are shared by the majority of voting Europeans.
The 2010 Eurobarometer report shows that only 27 per cent of respondents felt GM foods were safe, 30 per cent felt that they were not harmful to the environment and 76 per cent thought they were unnatural
In 2005 the US embassy expressed concern that the separation of GM and non GM foods threatened to stigmatise GM foods, most of which are produced in the US and deemed safe by the EU if their GM ingredient content is below a certain threshold.
None of the food importing organisations approached by the Cyprus Mail yesterday offered any comments on the matter. However, one supermarket assistant manager was happy to comply with any regulation.
“It will create problems with the re-ordering, but it will be good for customers to know which to buy. They will easily be able to see two products and choose.”
Under current EU laws, food and animal feed must carry a label which refers to the presence of GMOs. However, these labelling requirements do not apply to products with less than 0.9 per cent GM products.
In the case of pre-packaged products consisting of, or containing, GMOs, the list of ingredients must indicate “genetically modified” or “produced from genetically modified [name of the organism]”.
In the case of products without packaging these words must still be clearly displayed in close proximity to the product such as a note on the supermarket shelf.
