GM food: now is the time to learn the lessons of history
If the Elizabethans knew what we know now about tobacco smoking, they would have banned it 400 years ago. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, of course, and how we could do with that sort of knowledge now about genetically modified (GM) food.
GM food is causing a lot of concern. The public is concerned, the Government is concerned, retailers and food suppliers are concerned. And the result, as the law is revised to counter all this concern (see page 7), is that confusion reigns - as this magazine predicted it would ("Ingredients law is a recipe for confusion", Caterer, 4 March, page 16).
A big show is being made of presenting the worried public with guidelines based on informed choice. Food labelling regulations, which already cover retailers, have been extended to include restaurateurs.
The Government says customers should have the option of saying "no" to GM foods but, at the same time, it won't close the loophole in the law that allows the sale of GM by-products such as soya lecithin, oil and glucose. Neither can it guarantee that genetically modified animal feed or hormone enhanced meat is not entering the European food chain from abroad.
No matter - give the voting public the impression that something is being done to protect it, and enforce that impression by handing responsibility over to everyone who provides food, including caterers. It's called passing the buck and, ultimately, it dodges the real issue (is GM food safe to eat or not?) and it makes life unfairly harsh for the poor caterer.
When the Restaurant Association lampooned the future restaurant industry at its conference a couple of years ago, one of its targets was the menu. In a sketch demonstrating the absurdity of legislation such as we are seeing now, a menu the size of a telephone directory was presented because it had to describe all the ingredients in all the dishes. Could fiction become fact?
It is right that the public should be given as much information as possible, but the modified law appears impossible to action. As Michael Gottlieb of the Restaurant Association is reported to have said: "How on earth can it be enforced?"
So confusion reigns. But why has the situation been allowed to develop this far? If there really is so much concern over the consumption of GM food, why not ban the lot? The Elizabethans didn't know smoking was damaging to health, and so they, and successive generations, allowed the public a free choice - with disastrous results. The same could be happening with GM foods.
A song comes to mind. "You say tomato; I say genetically modified red fruit. I say potato; you say hormone-enhanced root vegetable… Let's call the whole thing off (at least until we know what we're talking about)." n
Forbes Mutch
Editor Caterer & Hotelkeeper
