The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has begun a program of voluntary verification for non-genetically modified and engineered foods.
Food manufacturers would have to pay the USDA to undergo voluntary certification – the first program of its kind – that would allow them to carry a label showing that they are “USDA process verified”. The US government has previously refused to consider mandatory labelling for genetically modified foods, as it considered foods that contain genetically modified or engineered ingredients to be safe.
The move was revealed in a letter to USDA employees written by Tom Vilsack, in which the agriculture secretary claimed that a “leading global company” had become the first organisation to make use of the USDA’s method.
But the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has publically warned that labelling foods non-GMO and non-GE may send the wrong messages to consumers.
CSPI biotechnology director Greg Jaffe said: “The verified ‘non-GMO’ program announced by the US Department of Agriculture may constitute a first step out of the morass posed by the state-by-state debates over labeling of foods with genetically engineered ingredients. It could provide consumers who wish to purchase foods where none of the ingredients came from an engineered crop with assurance that such a claim is accurate and approved by the government. However, USDA should ensure that any ‘non-GMO’ claim be as neutral as possible and that food companies using that claim do not try to convince consumers that those products are somehow superior or safer than their GMO equivalents in any way. There is a strong international consensus that current engineered crops and food ingredients made from those crops are safe and there is no safety reason for consumers to avoid products with ingredients from biotech crops.”
USDA should ensure that food companies using the ‘non-GMO’ claim do not try to convince consumers that those products are somehow superior or safer than their GMO equivalents.
Jaffe continued to add that the term GMO itself was a potentially sensitive area for the government department: “In fact,” he said, “USDA probably shouldn’t put its official imprimatur on the term GMO itself, since it’s primarily a pejorative designed to make genetically manipulated crops sound scarier than they really are. After all, there aren’t really ‘organisms’, genetically modified or otherwise, in a can of soda made with highly refined high-fructose corn syrup made from genetically engineered corn. It might make sense to call a genetically engineered salmon, say, a ‘GMO’. But the term doesn’t make sense for the tens of thousands of products that have highly refined ingredients from engineered corn or soy.”
© FoodBev Media Ltd 2024