Australian Financial Review Wednesday, May 10, 2000 GM food labelling talks delayed By Julie Macken Health Ministers in Australia and New Zealand have been advised that a May 12 meeting to confirm their decision to label all foods produced using gene technology has been postponed until July 28. According to the office of federal parliamentary secretary for health, Senator Grant Tambling, the delay was caused by "slippage" on the part of the task force. The task force, comprising senior officers from New Zealand's and each State and territory's health departments, was to have handed down its findings six weeks ago. That deadline came and went and the report, commissioned last October, was finally handed in last week. It contains a new set of costings by KPMG. Unlike the first costings by KPMG, which estimated the cost of labelling could approach $3 billion, these new figures suggest that "the industry could absorb the full cost without having to pass it on to consumers". However, Dr. Dick Copeman, co-ordinator of the Consumer Food Network, believes the meeting was postponed for political reasons. "With genetically modified ingredients already in over half of all processed foods, the Howard Government appears scared of letting consumers know just how much of their food is genetically engineered," he said. "Howard and Tambling want to shield themselves, and the multinational biotechnology corporations, from the anger of the people when they realise that we are all guinea pigs in a dangerous experiment." It is estimated that more than 60 per cent of the food now on supermarket shelves contains genetically modified product. The Australian Financial Review understands the most likely outcome of the Health Ministers meeting in July will be to adopt the same labelling system as the European Union. That is, any product containing more than 1 per cent of genetically modified material would have to carry the "Contains GM product" label. © This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorised use, copying or mirroring is prohibited. -- ********************************** 'Click' to protect the rainforest: Make the Rainforest Site your homepage! http://www.therainforestsite.com/ ********************************** ------------------------------------------------------ RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 and is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/ To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED], and in the body of the message, include the words: unsubscribe announce or click here mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20announce This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." RecOzNet2 is archived for members @ http://www.mail-archive.com/recoznet2%40paradigm4.com.au/
