By spring 2004, Canadian store shelves should begin to display products with labels that assure consumers the product does not contain genetically engineered material, says the chair of a committee that designed a code for voluntary labelling that likely will take effect by April.
“I believe it will come into effect in the first quarter of next year,” Doryne Peace of Toronto, chair of the Canadian General Standards Board committee that developed a voluntary labelling standard, said in a Dec. 5 interview.
“I think the take up on this will be quite strong by the industry because consumers have indicated they want information. I think the industry should be listening to its consumers.”
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In fact, public opinion polling indicates that the vast majority of consumers want mandatory rather than voluntary GM labelling rules.
Peace said that was not the mandate of the committee. However, consumers can lobby the industry and politicians to make the standard and its application de facto mandatory.
After close to four years of debate and controversy, the standards board committee funded by government and mainly representing government and industry players developed a voluntary standard that could be used to guide and govern future label content. By the end, almost all consumer representatives had withdrawn from the committee and anti-GM environmental groups boycotted it from the beginning.
The proposed standard is now being reviewed by the Canadian General Standards Board to make sure it was properly developed.
Then it will go to the Standards Council of Canada for the same review.
“I don’t expect there will be a problem with either review and I expect all that to be done and the standard implemented relatively quickly,” she said.
In addition to GM or GE free claims, it also will allow labels to tell consumers the product contains GM material, or in the case of highly refined product like canola oil, it could indicate that it is “a product of genetic engineering but does not contain GE material.”
Or the product label may contain no reference to its GM status at all, since it will be voluntary.
Companies will decide if labelling is a good marketing device or not. Consumer and environmental critics say that giving companies the option of using GM claims as a market tool is irrelevant to consumer demands for information about their food.
