By Kelly Burke

State and federal governments have promised an independent review of food
labelling laws, which will revisit the "traffic light" system of labelling
for salt, sugar and fat content.
The review was agreed to in principle at the Australia and New Zealand Food
Regulation Ministerial Council in Adelaide on Friday and will also examine
the issue of labelling all food sourced from genetically engineered crops.

The decision coincided with an open letter signed by 15 internationally
recognised scientists protesting over Australia's comparatively lax
labelling laws for GE food, sent to the federal Health Minister, Nicola
Roxon, last week.

The letter calls for an urgent independent review of Food Standards
Australia New Zealand, noting that the authority is one of only a few
regulators in the world to have approved every single application it has
received for GE products.

Many other countries are passing more stringent food labelling laws
controlling GE foods but products such as oils, starches and sugars still
require no labelling in Australia.

One of the letter's signatories, Dr Judy Carman, a director of the Institute
of Health and Environmental Research, said the decision not to mandate the
labelling of GE oils was based on FSANZ's flawed belief the oils do not
contain DNA or protein. Meat, milk, cheese and eggs produced by animals that
have been fed genetically engineered crops are also exempt from labelling.

"There is strong scientific evidence that FSANZ is wrong and that these
animal products should be labelled," she said.

The separate issue of front-of-pack traffic-light labelling will be examined
in the proposed review. The labelling system is loathed by many food
manufacturers because it identifies products high in salt, sugar, saturated
fats and total fat through a simple code using red, amber and green spots.
The issue is complicated by the absence of any regulation mandating the
labelling of trans fatty acids. These are more harmful than saturated fats,
yet under the proposed traffic light system these would still be classified
under total fats.

Last week the Australian Medical Association added its weight to the trans
fats debate, backing legislation introduced by the Greens in the NSW
Parliament to move towards a total ban, as Demark has done.

www.checkbiotech.org