OCTOBER 2003 Editorial

Last month Greenpeace launched the second edition of The True Food Guide, which rates more than 500 common supermarket brands according to their policy on the use of genetically engineered (GE) ingredients. Greenpeace claims that The True Food Guide’s ratings “surpass national labelling laws, providing Australian shoppers with the most reliable way of knowing if their food is GE-free”.

At the launch of the guide, Greenpeace trotted out Margaret Fulton, best-known for her recipes in The Australian Women’s Weekly. “Genetically engineered food threatens everything I stand for,” she said in a statement. “There is enough evidence to tell us that genetically engineered food is not a good idea.”

Fulton can speak with authority about whether GE ingredients offer equivalent flavour and texture to conventionally bred ingredients, but her expertise obviously does not extend to the metabolic reactions that take place once her culinary masterpieces have left the palate.

Each bolus of Fulton’s cuisine is a mixture of the DNA of every animal and plant species included in her recipe. But no matter which way you chew food, the DNA liberated from each animal and plant cell in the meal is digested into the simple nucleic acids that form these double helices, which are remarkably similar across kingdoms.

The True Food Guide implies that GE food is not “true food”, and is therefore poor for our health. Is there any evidence of this?

No, but there is evidence to the contrary. Consumers throughout the world are currently participating in a massive human trial of the safety of GE foods. Jim Peacock, Chief of CSIRO Plant Industry, calculates that 30 billion GE meals have already been consumed around the world following the ready uptake of GE foods into the supply chain (see pp.23-26). Yet he says “there is not a single case of adverse health effects”.

Despite this, organisations like Greenpeace are perpetuating the notion that GE foods are unfit for human consumption, and state governments are falling for it. At present moratoria are in place in five states and one territory against GE food crops.

This is a hypocritical stance. As recently as June a number of state premiers networked at Bio2003 in Washington, where they championed their states as biotechnology centres of excellence.

Guy Nolch
Editor