The Committee for Innovative Food, which met this week at the Ministry of Health in Tel Aviv, decided to promote legislation that would require the labeling of food products that contain genetically modified substances
Demonstration in Mexico City against genetically modified agricultural crops, November 2003. In Israel, the TMS Ministry opposes the labeling obligation
The Committee for Modern Food, which met this week at the Ministry of Health in Tel Aviv, decided to promote legislation that would require the labeling of food products that contain genetically modified substances.
The decision was made by a majority of the representatives of the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Agriculture, the Green Action organization and the Association of Manufacturers. Only the representative of the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Employment, Yair Sheeran, objected. He warned the members of the committee that the decision could provoke strong opposition from the United States and interfere with Israel's trade relations with the Americans.
Dr. Ofra Havkin from the Ministry of Health, who chaired the committee, explains that the road to legislation is still long. Now the draft regulations are undergoing legal drafting for legislation - a process that sometimes lasts a year or more. The possibility that the law will pass in the Knesset depends on the forces acting on it: the Ministry of Taxation may still fail the legislation.
"It also depends on the timing of the legislation in the Knesset," says Dr. Havkin. "In the UK, which has an overwhelming opposition to genetic engineering and a strict registration obligation, they recently allowed the cultivation of genetically modified crops. In the United States, on the other hand, there will soon be an obligation to register genetically modified crops for the first time". According to her, it is difficult to predict how these changes in attitude and the political and economic interests of Europe and the United States will affect the decision that will be made in the Knesset.
The not proud parents of the tomato
By Erna Kazin, Haaretz 20/1/04
The Governmental Committee for Innovative Food, which will meet today in Tel Aviv, will decide whether food companies will be required to label products that have undergone genetic engineering. Environmental organizations fear that the economic pressures exerted by the United States will cause this important information to be hidden from the public
Today at noon, the committee for modern food is scheduled to meet at the health office on Arbaa Street in Tel Aviv, where representatives from the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Association of Manufacturers, the Israel Consumer Council and the environmental organization "Green Trend" are sitting.
Opposite, in the Cinematheque square, the Alternative Committee for Modern Food will gather at the same time - a demonstrative event of activists in environmental organizations, including "Green Action", "Friends of the Earth", "Green Trend" and "Food Instead of Bombs". The activists invested a lot of effort in the last year to influence the path of the government committee. They drafted propaganda materials, petitioned the court, initiated queries in the Knesset, demonstrated and pleaded. To a large extent, the event taking place today is the culmination of their activity.
The issue at hand is supposedly technical. The members of the government committee have to decide today (finally, six years after the committee was established) whether to oblige the manufacturers, marketers and importers of food products to mark on the packaging any product that contains genetically modified raw material. In other words, the question is whether consumers of Kellogg's "Cornflex", for example, will be able to tell whether they are buying a product based on genetically modified corn or regular corn - or whether this information will be overlooked.
The environmental activists fear that today the committee will accept the position of the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Employment, which denies the obligation to mark (as drafted and delivered to the press and the Ministry of Health about a month ago with the signature of the minister, Ehud Olmert). According to the announcement of the Ministry of Taxation, government registration of genetically engineered products will be introduced, but there will be no marking on the packaging for the information of consumers. Olmert's reasoning: there is no proof that the genetic engineering process causes harm to humans, so consumers should not know if the product is genetically modified or not. In other words, this information is meaningless to us, but don't worry, the state will follow, register every genetically modified product with it, and if in the future it turns out that there is a danger, they will inform us.
A secret process
Environmental activists and food experts say that the Ministry of Food and Agriculture's position is actually intended to serve the trade relations between Israel and the United States. The Americans want to facilitate the passage of their goods in the world, and remove every possible obstacle that stands before them. Labeling of genetically modified food products is an obstacle for them. In the United States, huge companies operate in the field of genetic engineering - the American corporation Monsanto, for example, is notorious among environmental organizations as a predatory corporation that does everything to advance its economic interests. The US Food and Drug Administration is known for its weak stance against Monsanto and other food corporations. This fact has been revealed in recent years in a series of investigative articles in the American and European press.
In the position of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, there is a reason to respond to American interests and to turn one's back to the positions of Europe - contrary to what has been accepted up to now in everything related to food in Israel. Europe is the world's main opponent of genetically modified food. There is a strict labeling obligation, and between it and the United States a real economic war broke out over the matter. In general, the principles of food control in the European Union are considered stricter, more professional and more accurate than in the United States - they are less subject to pressure from those with business interests.
Activists in environmental organizations also point out that Olmert's promise that the state will register genetically modified products with it - the same patronizing reassuring statement addressed to Israeli consumers - is actually an eye catch. Registration of genetically modified varieties is already mandatory in Israel, but it is actually only relevant to growers and marketers of the raw materials - corn, soybeans, potatoes and tomatoes, for example. Only they can submit to the inspectors the necessary documents to monitor the genetic engineering process. The manufacturers and marketers of the processed and packaged food products generally do not have access to the genetic engineering process of the raw material.
Genetic engineering of food is defined as the introduction of DNA (genes) into cells in the protein of the plant, animal or microorganism, in any way that is not natural fertilization of egg and sperm or natural hybridization by bacteria. This is an action that is done, obviously, in the initial stage of growing the raw material. Besides, the commercial cultivation of transgenic plants is mostly done in the United States, Canada and South America, not in Israel.
But in any case, this is not the fundamental question. The original position of the Ministry of Health was that the public has the right to know, and therefore it is mandatory to mark the packaging, even if there is no proof that the genetic engineering process is harmful or dangerous. According to this approach, there is essentially no necessary connection between the potential for danger and the obligation to mark.
The guiding principle in packaging labeling is that consumers are adults in a democratic society, and they have the right to receive information in order to make informed decisions. Everything that the food contains should be written on the packaging - calories, proteins, carbohydrates, spices, caffeine, chemicals, food colors and other substances - and it is also appropriate to indicate the essential processing processes.
According to the same principle, it is mandatory to mark in Israel, for example, food products that have undergone pasteurization - a process that guarantees the destruction of disease-causing bacteria through heating for a certain time - and also products that have undergone radioactive irradiation at the Nahal Sorek Nuclear Institute. It is mandatory to label irradiated and pasteurized food products even though the Ministry of Health is convinced that they pose no danger to consumers, otherwise they would not approve their marketing.
The purpose of the marking is to convey information to the consumer and nothing else. Many consumers would prefer to buy hot paprika that has been irradiated, for example, because it guarantees that all bacteria and molds have been destroyed and the product is durable and not dangerous to eat. On the other hand, there are consumers who would prefer to buy unpasteurized milk products from small dairies for reasons of taste, even though unpasteurized milk is dangerous to health (and therefore prohibited in commercial marketing). And so, vegetarian consumers, for example, may choose genetically modified soy products, because in the process of genetic engineering, the quality of the soy protein has been improved and the product becomes more nutritious and serves as a more successful substitute for meat.
Fear of the unknown
The controversy over genetically modified food usually focuses on the question of the danger posed to the environment and consumers. The concern in the environmental field is the migration of genes between plants and different biological species, without humans and animals knowing how to identify the plants and organisms. That is, it is a fear of the unknown.
The health danger that may be faced by those who eat genetically modified food is attributed to three areas: resistance to antibiotics, allergy and toxicity. In the genetic engineering process, antibiotics are sometimes used to mark the transplanted genes - and this may cause consumers to become over-resistant to antibiotics.
People with allergic sensitivities to food may suffer from genetically modified foods for other reasons: for example, in an experiment done in the mid-90s, Brazil nut genes were inserted into the DNA of soybeans, in order to plant essential amino acids in the soybeans to improve the protein. In the experiment, it turned out that the nut's allergenic properties were also transferred to the soy, and thus people allergic to nuts may eat the soy without knowing that it has a nutty property that endangers them. Following the discovery, the experiment was stopped and the soy was not commercially developed. A case was also investigated in which a potato, implanted with an insect repellent gene, poisoned laboratory mice that fed on it.
Such cases, known in the professional literature, apparently point to the health dangers but also to the possibility of monitoring the experiments and preventing the commercial distribution of dangerous crops. Therefore, it is a freedom of information issue rather than a health issue.
Pork tomato
A considered and interesting approach, which should guide the decision makers in Israel, is the approach of the British Institute of Food Science and Technology (IFST - a non-commercial organization that also includes food technologists in Israel). In the position paper published on the organization's website (www.ifst.org), the possible advantages of the new technology are highlighted: "Genetic engineering has the potential to offer real improvements to the amount of food in the world, its quality and distribution," the institute's staff write.
They believe that the British public - led by Prince Charles, who has become a vocal activist on the issue - is wrong in its sweeping opposition to genetically modified products, and that in some cases the British lose from this. But the IFST personnel immediately qualifies that this is only a "positive potential of genetic engineering, and that the potential will only be realized if all the issues of product safety, the impact on the environment, ethics and information are taken into account."
The members of the institute emphasize that genetic engineering is mainly an operation that imitates and accelerates natural and agricultural activity - hybridization of varieties on agricultural farms, fertilization of plants in nature by the wind and bees, which over the years leads to changes in the genetic makeup of plants and the development of new varieties. What changes here is the rapid pace of change as well as the possibility of crossing the biological species barrier: today it is possible to plant, for example, the DNA of a pig in the DNA of a tomato. Such an action poses an ethical and philosophical problem, but above all, say the members of the British Institute, it obliges the producers to inform the consumers. Muslims, Jews and devout vegetarians may not want to eat a tomato that has porcine qualities. Others may choose this tomato because of its beneficial properties. The new technology should not be rejected, but it must be exposed to the public eye and constantly subjected to public and professional criticism.
Today, in front of the meeting of the Committee for Modern Food in Tel Aviv, the environmental activists will wave signs stating: "We are not guinea pigs for genetically modified food." They will walk with giant dolls of genetically modified vegetables - in the style of the big demonstrations of the Greenpeace organization in Europe. Avi Levy, from the Green Action organization, says that if the committee does not oblige today to label the engineered products, the members of the organization will continue the fight against the decision and will appeal to the Supreme Court.
The activists fear that their position will not be accepted by the committee. The consumer representative from the Israeli Consumer Council, who is supposed to attend the meeting, is on reserve duty today and has no replacement. The original approach of the Ministry of Health, which raised the consumer's right to receive information similar to the principles used in Europe, has also changed a little recently and is closer in spirit to the position of the Ministry of Health, which prefers business interests over freedom of information.
The activists' request to receive the protocols of the committee meetings and the correspondence between the Ministry of Health and the other government ministries was answered in the negative. Only after they petitioned the court about two months ago, through attorney Liat Golan from the Environmental Justice Program at Tel Aviv University, did they petition the office and hand over the documents to the activists. The Ministry of Health also refused a request by journalists to observe the committee's meeting today on the grounds that it is an internal professional matter and the discussion is closed to the public.
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