Codex Alimentarius and GM Food Guidelines, Pt. 1

Codex Alimentarius and GM Food Guidelines, Pt. 1







Updated excerpt from Codex Alimentarius -- The End of Health Freedom

Available Here

Brandon Turbeville
Activist Post

Over the last two years, I have written extensively about the Codex Alimentarius guidelines and how they relate specifically to vitamin and mineral supplements, food irradiation, and the use of Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH).

I have also detailed the history and workings of the international
organization as well as many of the current day to day manifestations of
Codex guidelines as they appear in domestic policy.

However, there is yet another area in which Codex guidelines will play a
major role in the development of food policy – namely, the
proliferation of Genetically Modified Food.

The Codex committee that serves as the main battleground for the
consideration of GM food is the Codex Committee on Food Labeling. This
committee is extremely relevant due to the fact that it can effectively
reduce the power of the consumer to virtually nothing if it decides not
to force companies or countries to label their GM food, thus removing
the ability of the consumer to boycott and/or avoid those products.
While it is well-known that public sentiment is unimportant to those at
the top, governments and corporations tend to pay more attention when
votes and sales reflect that sentiment. However, if Codex continues on
its’ way to allowing unlabelled GM food onto the international market,
the repercussions of consumer reaction will be entirely neutralized.

A brief discussion of the history of Codex in terms of GM food is
necessary here to understand the direction that the organization is
moving towards in regards to it.

For most of the seventeen years that Codex member
countries have debated the safety of genetic modification of the food
supply, the result has been little or no progress for one side or the
other.

In 1993, at the behest of the Codex Commission, the CCFL agreed to begin
working on the labeling aspect of GM food. Interestingly enough, the
CCFL asked the United States, the country that was the most militant in
its support of genetic modification, to develop a paper that would guide
the committee’s discussion at the following session. When this session
arrived, there was a flurry of opinions tossed around from several
different countries. The most sensible position was that all GM foods
should be labeled under any circumstances. Yet other countries,
especially the pro-Gm ones, argued that labeling should only be required
when there is the introduction of health or safety concerns, allergens,
or when the food is significantly different from its traditional
counterpart.[1] This is a debate that largely continues until this day.





The concept of “substantial equivalence” versus “process-based” labeling
has also become one of the most hotly contested issues within the Codex
GM food labeling debate. Process-based labeling simply means that the
driving factor behind the labeling guidelines is the process by which
the food is created, grown, or otherwise produced. Therefore, the
qualifying factor for labeling GM food would be the process of genetic
modification itself, forcing all GM food to be labeled as such. This is
essentially the mandatory labeling of all GM food. When this concept was
first introduced in 2001, it was supported by such countries as the
European Union, India, and Norway. Its staunchest opponents, of course,
were the United States and Canada.[2] Although this method of labeling
standards was by far the most sensible if one were concerned about food
safety and consumer rights of choice, it has been all but abandoned
since the brief discussion at its introduction. The attention then has
necessarily turned to the competing set of standards known as
“substantial equivalence.”

“Substantial equivalence” guidelines are by far the most onerous means
by which to label GM food outside of the scheme of voluntary labeling
(such as what Canada has already pushed for).[3]

This
set of standards not only provides loopholes through which GM food may
enter the food supply, but also opens the door to total acceptance of GM
food absolutely free of labeling. The idea behind the substantial
equivalence labeling method is that the GM food will be compared to its
conventional counterpart in terms of safety and composition.[4]

The food would then only require a label if it was found that there was a
substantial difference between the GM product and the natural food or
there were an introduction of a common allergen through the process of
genetic modification. While at first it may seem that there is a
legitimate consideration of safety under these principles, such an
impression is far from the truth.

Several problems exist with the concept of substantial equivalence.
First, as is often the case with government and bureaucratic
initiatives, the semantics of the term “substantial equivalence” leaves
the door open to the possible acceptance of virtually all GM food. While
I will discuss this aspect further in future articles where the
accepted Codex guidelines for testing GM food is mentioned, brief
mention is still required early on in order to understand the dangers of
the use of this labeling standard.

In order for a food to require labeling, it must do one of two things –
introduce a new allergen or be significantly different from its
“traditional counterpart.”[5] The former requirement refers to the
introduction of something along the lines of the peanut gene or the
introduction of another common allergy to a food, thereby causing a
potential allergic reaction to the food after consuming it. However,
there are thousands of food allergies besides peanuts. Codex itself
admits in its GM food test protocol that the determination of what may
be an allergy is a very difficult procedure. It says “At present, there
is no definitive test that can be relied upon to predict allergic
response in humans to a newly expressed protein.”[6]

Although the guidelines go on to say that these potential allergens
should be tested on a case-by-case basis, it is clear that the testing
mechanisms being recommended are not necessarily geared for determining
the potential allergenicity of newly introduced GM foods. Especially on
the scale that is needed to deal with the immense diversity of GM
prototypes being introduced and the even greater variety of individual
allergies that exist in the population.

It should also be noted that while there is some discussion of known
allergens, there is no in-depth discussion of the very real possibility
of new and previously unknown allergens being introduced due to the
process of genetic modification. Indeed, the monitoring of the food
once it enters the food chain is only occasionally mentioned throughout
the Codex “Foods Derived From Modern Biotechnology” document and those
mentions are vague and open-ended.[7] So the question that follows is
whether or not all of these potential allergens will be labeled as such,
or if only the most common ones will be considered.

Second, the requirement that a food must be compared and found
substantially equivalent to its “traditional counterpart” (natural food)
is misleading as well. To begin with, one must ask the question of
what exactly “substantial equivalence” means. Quite obviously, the term
does not mean that the GM product must be identical. This, in itself
would negate the process of genetic modification.

Therefore,
differences must necessarily be accepted. However, it is not at all
clear just to what level these differences may exist and still be
considered equivalent and/or safe. Nowhere is “substantial equivalence”
clearly defined. The criterion for what is substantial and what is not
is left completely open and subjective.

The closest thing there is to a definition is made by Nick Tomlinson of
the UK Food Standards Agency in his report, “Joint FAO/WHO Expert
Consultation on Foods Derived from Biotechnology” where he references
the 1996 expert consultation where substantial equivalence was defined
as “being established by a demonstration that the characteristics
assessed for the genetically modified organism, or the specific food
product derived there from, are equivalent to the same characteristics
of the conventional comparator.”[8]

Here again the term equivalence is used with the connotation that
equivalent does not translate into identical or same. Tomlinson makes
this clear when he says:
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The levels and variation for characteristics in the genetically modified
organism must be within the natural range of variation for those
characteristics considered in the comparator and be based upon an
appropriate analysis of data.[9] </blockquote>
By not exactly being descriptive as to how wide a range this “natural
range of variation” may be, it is apparent that substantial equivalence
does not correlate to identical or even anything that would remotely be
considered the “same.” Indeed, the very nature of genetic modification
precludes this as a possibility to begin with.

The concept of substantial equivalence is unfortunately the theory of
labeling requirements adopted by Codex. It is also very similar to the
criteria used in the United States and Canada.

As to be expected in such pro-GM countries as the United States, the GM
labeling requirements are even less restrictive than those of Codex.
For the most part, labeling of GM foods in the United States and Canada
is completely voluntary.

This voluntary labeling scheme based on the concept of substantial
equivalence is both a prime example of the weakness of both standards as
well as a dark omen as to the direction of Codex guidelines as they
continue to be developed.[10]

Source:-
http://www.activistpost.com/2013/02/codex-alimentarius-and-gm-food.html