A report from the US-based National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine has found there is no substantiated evidence of risks to human health due to eating food from genetically modified (GM) crops. Matthew Cossey, chief executive Australia’s plant science industry peak organisation CropLife Australia, said he hoped common sense would prevail over partisan politics.
Low level presence (LLP) refers to the unintended presence, at low levels, of minute amounts of genetically modified (GM) plant material that has been approved in at least one country but not necessarily in the importing country.
Australia has robust gene technology and food safety regulatory systems whose objectives are to identify and manage risks to human and animal health and the environment.
CropLife Australia supports enhancing the existing science-based framework by encouraging the Australian Government to recognise that some GM crops grown and approved overseas may not yet be approved for environmental release or food and feed use in Australia, and to develop a practical and pragmatic LLP policy that reduces potential trade impacts of a future LLP incident without undermining our current regulatory protections.
Food Standard 1.5.2 mandates the pre-market safety assessment and labelling of all genetically modified (GM) foods and food ingredients in Australia.
CropLife supports Food Standard Australia New Zealand (FSANZ)’s rigorous and transparent process for assessing the safety of GM foods, based on internationally established scientific principles and guidelines.
However, labelling of GM food has nothing to do with the health or safety of the food; it is an issue of consumer choice. CropLife Australia supports mandated food product labels where these labels communicate information that is relevant to human health and safety.
CropLife supports voluntary labelling of food products based on consumer preferences, providing the label is truthful and not misleading.
An increasing number of plant products derived using biotechnology are approved for farmers to grow in many countries around the world. However, the timing of regulatory approval of these products can vary for importing countries because of different approval processes in each country.
CropLife Australia advocates for a global system that allows science-based biotech product approvals to occur simultaneously. We are also working to eliminate unscientific zero tolerance policies for GM crops. These blanket bans, and inconsistent and delayed product approval processes, can cause major disruptions to trade. See full Policy Statement here.
CropLife Australia recognises the importance of plant breeding innovation (PBI). In most cases, innovations in plant breeding are improvements and refinements of traditional breeding methods used to optimise plant health, nutritional quality and yield.
In many cases, PBIs result in products that are similar to or indistinguishable at the genome level from products developed through traditional breeding methods. CropLife is concerned about the unnecessary regulation of products developed using PBIs based simply on the breeding technique employed and not the characteristics of the final product.
CropLife advocates that plants produced by PBIs which are indistinguishable or similar to plants developed through traditional breeding, or plants derived from natural variation in plant genomes, are regulated in the same way as conventionally bred plants.
State moratoriums on growing genetically modified crops should be phased out, according to a parliamentary committee report into agricultural innovation released last week. CropLife Australia chief executive Matthew Cossey said GM crop moratoriums in Tasmania and South Australia had not delivered a marketing advantage and had denied farmers in these states from financial, agronomic and environmental benefits of new technologies.
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