GE Foods Tutorial

270-group Consumer Federation calls for labeling

In January 2001, a giant coalition of 270 consumer groups, including the American Association of Retired People and the Consumers Union, called on President Bush and Congress to label biotech foods, as well as require strict safety and environmental testing.

In a 250-page report financed by a grant from the prestigious Rockefeller Foundation, the federation said the U.S. government "has basically abandoned its responsibility" to ensure the safety of genetically engineered foods.

As it stands, government oversight "assumes no human greed and no human error," said Carol Tucker Foreman, who heads the federation's Food Policy Institute. It thus "holds great peril for the public and does no good to the (biotechnology) industry."

The report also calls for the end of a government policy that holds that GE foods are "substantially equivalent" to their non-GE counterparts. This policy serves as a loophole, allowing biotech companies to avoid substantial safety testing of their products.

The Consumer Federation stressed that biotech foods may help increase the supply and nutritional content of food worldwide. But, Foreman said, "rigorous and credible regulation is necessary. Government and industry have deprived genetically modified foods of an important asset - public confidence."

While GE foods have several possible benefits, the group said, they might also cause allergic reactions and create toxic proteins that might harm human health. In addition, biotech foods could create "superweeds", threaten biodiversity and reduce populations of beneficial insects.

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