Genetically Modified Food

European Union legislation defines GM food as “food containing, consisting of or produced from a genetically modified organism”. This means that any product derived, either directly or indirectly, from a GM crop is defined as ‘genetically modified’.

This covers products made from GM crops such as maize starch which include traces of GM material, as well as other products like maize oil which are so highly processed that all traces of GM material are removed. There are also less obvious examples such as glucose syrup, widely used as an ingredient in food processing. Glucose syrup is made from starch. If the starch happens to be GM maize starch, the glucose syrup made from it will also be GM even though all GM material will have been removed from the syrup during processing.

So it’s often difficult for consumers to know whether a particular food is GM but, following EU regulations agreed in 2004, all products derived from a GMO must now be labelled as GM, whether or not they contain GM material. As a practical necessity, the regulations set a labelling threshold of 0.9% to take account of accidental contamination that might arise during cultivation, harvesting, transport and processing. Food containing less than 0.9% GM-modified inputs need not have to be labelled, so long as the contamination can be shown to be accidental.

There are two main concerns about GM. The first is the possibility that unwanted traits could be added to an organism as well as the desired ones thus creating a health risk. So before any GM food can be sold in the EU it is subject to a rigorous safety assessment that includes checks for possible changes in its allergenic potential or nutritional profile. This assessment is carried out by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).

The second concern is the risk of cross contamination of crops. GM legislation enforces a quarantine zone around GM fields where non-GM varieties of the same crop cannot be grown. The aim is to prevent the GM strain contaminating the standard varieties. This though is hard to control and some cross contamination would be inevitable if GM crops were ever grown in Europe on a large scale. This would be a problem for organic farmers, but whether this would pose more than a symbolic risk to consumers is questionable.

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