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December 2003 |
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From farm to table |  Back to contents | ||
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The daunting task of developing a legal framework for GM foods in the European Community has not been easy. GM remains a highly emotive issue for consumers, many of whom are concerned about the potential risks to human health and the environment (EHJ, November 2001, page 356). While the European Commission has sought to placate consumers, it also recognises that GM products cannot be kept out of the market indefinitely. Consequently, the new regulations have been designed to enable the public to make an informed choice about what they are consuming. When the EC's regulation on GM food and feed comes into force in April, all ingredients that contain or consist of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), or contain ingredients produced from GMOs will need to be labelled as such before reaching the final consumer or mass caterers.1 This marks an expansion in the labelling requirements to include not just the presence of GM material but also products produced or derived from GMOs regardless of the presence of GM material (see this month's EU news, page 379). There are however, some cases where labelling will not apply, for instance, where the adventitious presence of approved GM material is below a 0.9 per cent threshold. Additionally, the EC has set a 0.5 per cent threshold for allowing the presence of non-approved GM material as long as it passes a safety assessment from scientific committees at the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). This threshold will only apply for a three-year period. The new regulation also will not apply to food that has been produced with GM processing aids, for example, some cheeses, or products from animals that have been fed GM animal feed.1 In the second, related regulation on traceability and labelling, food operators will be required to put into place systems and procedures to account for and identify GM products throughout the supply chain, with the objective of facilitating accurate labelling. The EC's intention is to provide a harmonised EU system on the documentation that is needed to trace GM products from farm to table. For products that consist of or contain GMOs, written documentation must be transmitted throughout all stages of the supply chain. This documentation must state that the product contains or consists of GMOs, and provide the unique identifiers for the GMOs. Operators will have to retain this documentation for five years. An alternative traceablility procedure can be used for products that consist of or contain mixtures of GMOs, which are to be used only directly for food, feed or processing. This will entail a declaration of use by the operator and a list of the unique identifiers "for all those GMOs that have been used to constitute the mixture."2 In the case of food and feed that has been produced from GMOs, written documentation must be transmitted to the operator receiving the product for each transaction. The documentation must provide an indication of each of the food ingredients, feed materials, or feed additives, which is produced from GMOs. If no ingredients list exists, an indication that the product is produced from GMOs must be documented. As with the products consisting of or containing GMOs, all operators must retain the documentation for a period of five years. There will be a requirement to carry out inspections and other control measures once the regulations are introduced, including sample checks and testing to ensure compliance. The EC is currently consulting on the technical aspects of implementation, ie the unique identifiers and the sampling and testing methods and this information will be available in due course. In the meantime, the Food Standards Agency and the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which share responsibility for the implementation of the new regulations into UK law, announced plans in November to issue a joint consultation on the draft domestic legislation. The FSA and Defra have also said that they will produce draft guidance to accompany the regulations and a draft regulatory impact assessment by the end of the year.1 But in what ways will the new regulations affect local authority enforcement? According to Jenny Morris, CIEH policy officer, this will depend on the regulatory set up, but in principle, environmental health officers should be able to enforce it anywhere that they enforce labelling legislation. She believes that potentially, there are huge enforcement issues, particularly with regard to traceability and labelling in cash and carry outlets and catering establishments. "As the traceability requirement is a 'one up and one down', the implication for cash and carries, where products are not sold to the final consumer, is that they will need to be able to identify individual purchases of GM products and maintain the records for five years. For caterers, it is not so straightforward and guidance will be needed, 'may contain' labelling will not apparently be appropriate." A month prior to the regulations being announced, the CIEH issued a professional practice note for EHPs, which focused on enforcement in the catering and retail environments where, at present, there is little professional guidance.3 The historical division of enforcement responsibility in parts of the UK has meant that food law has often been referred to as either food hygiene law or food standards law. Environmental health departments are responsible for enforcing food standards law (the labelling, description, composition and ingredients of food) in Northern Ireland, Scotland, London, and in some English metropolitan districts and unitary authorities in England and Wales. In legal terms, food enforcement bodies must uphold five essential objectives in food standards law, including providing consumers with information, facilitating product traceability and protecting public health. While GM is not defined as a food safety issue in food law, the results of the first nationwide public debate on GM and GM crops, published in the report GM nation? reveals that the UK public generally remains uncertain and cautious towards GM.4, 5 The public debate, which was jointly funded by Defra, the Department for Trade and Industry and the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland examined a diverse range of issues, one of which discussed the regulatory process and its impact on GM food safety. Not surprisingly, considering the emotive nature of the subject matter, opinions were divided.6 On the one hand, advocates of GM claimed that a "rigorous and extensive testing regime" exists to protect the consumer. Independent scientists and regulators in the UK, EU and worldwide will ensure that claims made about safety in relation to human health and the environment are substantiated, and until these regulatory bodies are satisfied that GM food is as safe as non-GM, GM cannot be sold to consumers. The main stumbling block in this argument for opponents is that GM is still a new process and as a result, it cannot be claimed with any certainty that it will be safe in the long term. Whatever happens, when the domestic legislation comes into force next April, the public will expect it to be rigorously enforced. According to the CIEH's practice note, surveys have shown how importantly consumers view the effective enforcement of food standards law. Many consumers take an active interest in the ingredients or nutritional value of food for a wide range of reasons. Purchasing decisions can be influenced by cultural, ethical or moral beliefs and an increasing number of consumers regulate their diet for health reasons. By law, consumers have to be given certain key information about food that is being sold. But this can vary, for example on whether the food is being sold in retailers or catering establishments. Food sold in catering establishments, such as restaurants, pubs, clubs and canteens, has not up to now required much description or labelling by law, although when information is provided, it must be accurate and not mislead consumers. As a result, it is one of the more difficult situations in which to enforce food standards law. Part of the problem lies in the fact that some of the information which needs to be provided when food is supplied to catering establishments will be found in commercial documents that accompany the food rather than on the label. In fact, only the legal name, best before/use by date, and name and address must be labelled on the food itself, and this information is usually found on the outermost packaging. This means that enforcement officers may need to examine invoices, product specifications, data sheets, or any other paperwork that arrived with the food to find the information that is needed to verify compliance. However, many enforcement officers will be familiar with situations in which the accompanying documentation is only partially provided or has been separated from the materials. When this happens, officers may have to go to great lengths to track down the missing paperwork, which can be resource intensive. If documentation is missing or incomplete, it also poses a challenge for enforcement officers in tracing materials back in the supply chain. At this early stage, it is difficult to say whether enforcement officers will see this as a priority area, particularly when GM is not deemed a food safety issue. Nevertheless, being the emotive subject that it is, there may well be public pressure for traceability to be rigorously enforced. As practitioners know only too well, the enforcement of food standards law often relies on verifying that the food in question, and in particular the ingredients and other constituents of the food, meets certain criteria, for example, any legal compositional standards that apply to the food. For this reason, taking samples of food for analysis by the public analyst is one of the best means of enforcing food standards law. However, as Michael Reilly, lead food standards officer at the Royal Borough of Kingston Upon Thames explains, sampling for GM is an expensive, resource intensive and time-consuming process. He agrees with the legislation in principle but is sceptical that local authorities will see it as a priority and suspects that it will be very difficult to enforce in practice unless performance targets are imposed. If the legislation is to be effective, he argues, there will be resource issues to consider. Les Bailey, policy officer for food standards at the Local Authority Co-ordinators of Regulatory Services (Lacors) disagrees in terms of enforcement activity. He believes that local authorities will see enforcement of the new legislation as a priority, partly because of the emotive nature of the subject matter. Public interest in GM may, he argues, even influence how local authorities allocate their resources. He does however, acknowledge that the time consuming nature and expense of sampling, which on average ranges from £600-£1,000 per sample, may act as a deterrent for local authorities to carry out much work. There is another sampling issue that needs to be considered, relating to the 0.9 per cent threshold for the adventitious presence of approved GM material. Although it is possible for public analysts to identify GM at a very low level, once the material becomes a compound product or complex mixture, there is a problem with quantification. "Unless you are able to test the raw materials, it is very difficult," says Carol Stevens, public analyst for Worcestershire County Council. "Once GM has been incorporated into composite food, testing becomes an arm's length process. The only way back to the source is through audit trails and documentation". While Ms Stevens agrees that getting hold of the exact standard is problematic, she says that the same difficulties apply to organic materials. She also stresses that she has not seen much evidence of the deliberate incorporation of GM at low levels. Under the new rules, she concludes that it will be impossible to test for GM and that verification will completely rely on audit trails and documentation. Last year, the first GM-labelling prosecution in the UK was brought following a visit to a supermarket in Leamington Spa by trading standards officers at Warwickshire County Council in February 2001 (EHN, March 22, 2002, page 4). A DNA test carried out on a sample of soya mince taken from an unlabelled packet showed that the product contained more than 50 per cent GMOs. When the shop was able to show that it had taken due care, liability passed to the food packer, who had been buying in bulk soya chunks and repackaging them to sell nationally and internationally. In this case, the packer had failed to pass on information from the supplier about the presence of GM material in the product. Commenting on the case, Richard Brook, divisional trading standards officer at the council, says, "One of the clear lessons from the prosecution is that effective enforcement is down to a combined approach between the public analyst and enforcement bodies. There needs to be very close joint working for the regulations to be effectively enforced." He says that local authorities would benefit from sharing information about samples, as this would reduce costs, avoid duplication and identify gaps in the system. Mr Brook is currently working on a combined national enforcement database that is being funded by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister as part of the e-government agenda. Part of the project's aim is to make sampling data available to all local authorities to assist them in their enforcement duties. While GM is not deemed a food safety issue, public concern on this issue remains high. Consumers need protecting and enforcement of the regulations is essential if the public is to make an informed choice about what they are buying. Whether other enforcement bodies will follow Warwickshire CC's lead and take a proactive stance on GMOs has yet to be seen. What is clear is that enforcement can only be effective if enforcement bodies and public analysts work closely to ensure consumers are given the choices they demand. References
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