Food Label Pitfalls

Back in late 2010, Channel 7's Sunday Night brought to our attention the presence of GM Soy in Wyeth's S26 Soy Baby formula.  It was covered in most major media, but once revealed the story seemed to disappear.  The crux of the story was this:  According to testing by Greenpeace and Channel Seven, S26 was found to have traces of GM soy in it's formula.  Though Wyeth tested further batches which they claim had no detectable amounts (their statement), they pointed out that under Australian regulation, an amount of up to 1% GM was acceptable and did not have to be labelled, if the inclusion was 'unintentional'.  I have ploughed through the Food Standards website, looking at both the GM guidelines and the Infant Formula guidelines.  Wyeth of course are claiming it was unintentional but Greenpeace are alleging that this test has come up positive 10 times now, since 1998.  Looking through the Greenpeace articles, it's not just the 'it was an accident' clause that lets companies off the hook- animals fed with GM food may be making their way to our dinner plates, foods made on site (restaurants, fast food, bakeries) and food that is highly refined may all contained non-labelled GM ingredients.

The food labelling laws were review as recently as the end of January.  Despite over 90% of Australians wanting ALL GM foods listed, the review did not make any recommendations regarding this.  Considering some of the research, and the lack of long term study on the effects of GM foods, it seems ridiculous that we may be consuming or feeding our children GM product without even realising.  Greenpeace has published info stating that GM crops are potentially harmful both physiologically and to the environment.  At least one particular strain of GM corn has been banned in several European countries.  Most websites and articles are free to admit there is little 'proof' that GM food is good or bad for us, the problem is that we are just assuming it is safe- there has been no opportunity to examine it's long term effects, particularly on children who has consumed large quantities of the product.  Genetic modification has only really existed for about 15 years and has only become widespread more recently than that.  Will we find out too late the damage it is doing to our bodies, our eco-systems and our way of life?