Premier Alan Carpenter has called for better labelling of foods that contain Genetically Modified ingredients and an immediate halt to the approval of all GM foods in Australia until more is known about the safety of eating them. Mr Carpenter said Australia’s national food regulator, Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ), should not approve any more foods for human consumption until it introduced independent scientific trials to determine the safety of GM foods. ”I find it unbelievable and unacceptable that the national food regulator relies principally on the say-so of the GM companies when assessing GM foods as safe to eat,” he said.

Last month, GM canola crops were planted for the first time in NSW and Victoria after the two states announced they would let their bans on genetically engineered food crops expire. In response, local celebrity chefs including Neil Perry and Kylie Kwong have signed on to the GM Free Chefs’ Charter, launched in collaboration with Greenpeace in Sydney. The charter, unveiled at chef Jared Ingersoll’s Danks Street Depot restaurant in the inner-city Sydney suburb of Waterloo, calls for the NSW and Victorian governments to reverse their position on growing GM canola and demands thorough labelling of all food products that contain GM ingredients.

The Federal Government’s agricultural forecaster has defended the way it conducts its research, during tough questioning by the Rural Senate Estimates Committee. [...] ABARE chief executive Philip Glyde replied that the agency couldn’t consider every factor when assessing GM crop benefits. [...] ”You can’t often factor in the real precision of the real world, so what we do is describe an illustrative scenario.

My work colleagues in Eastern Asia and Latin America have witnessed the negative effects of genetically modified crops on the farmers they work with. Farmers in the developing world have been used as guinea pigs. Film stars, employed by biotech companies as PR agents, con farmers into buying GM seed with promises of increased crop yields. This is a lie. Neither GM cotton yields in India nor GM soy bean yields in Latin America have increased. Unsuitable cotton crops in India have failed. The net result is that the farmers who borrowed money to buy the failed GM seed cannot pay back their debts.

THE head chef of one of Melbourne’s best-known restaurants has called on consumers to boycott establishments that don’t commit to being GM-free. ”I know it sounds scary … but unless a massive amount of people go against (GM), nothing is going to be done to stop it,” Geraud Fabre, head chef of France-Soir restaurant in South Yarra, says. ”I don’t say it to get more customers, but I reckon … if people close their restaurants because there are no customers … it would make the Government realise they shouldn’t (allow genetically modified crops in Australia).”

Widespread planting of genetically modified crops would net Australia $8 billion during the next decade, government researchers estimate. NSW and Western Australia have the most to gain from the controversial practice of GM cropping, which would boost yields and cut costs, a glowing report by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) found. GM crops would even help the environment and increase biodiversity, the report claimed. ABARE’s executive director Phillip Glyde says the report shows that banning GM crops would cost farmers dearly.

In the global biotechnology arena, Australia has once again taken on the cowboy role, by refusing to participate in the international United Nations Biosafety Protocol negotiations being held in Bonn, Germany this month. This meeting will deal with the impacts of genetically engineered organisms (GMOs) contaminating the food chain. Issues of liability and redress for damage caused by GM contamination will culminate at these negotiations with no input from Australia.

Grain growers in Australia, the world’s third-largest canola exporter, may produce as much as 2 percent of this year’s harvest from genetically modified seed after bans on GM crops were lifted in two states. Farmers in New South Wales and Victoria may plant a total of 10,000 hectares to 12,000 hectares of Roundup Ready canola this year, or about 1 percent to 2 percent of the nation’s crop, Anna Hall, spokeswoman for Monsanto Co.’s Australian unit, said in a telephone interview from Melbourne.

A new WA-grown apple that doesn’t go brown when cut will be available on supermarket shelves this month. Agriculture and Food Minister Kim Chance said the new Western Dawn variety would be sold to the public under the name, Enchanted. [...] It has been bred naturally in WA, using conventional breeding techniques, from the varieties Lady Williams and Golden Delicious.

The SBS Special Broadcasting System program ”Insight” took a look at how safe eating GM foods is, what research has been done, and how Australians can know what they are eating, and the results were a damnation of GM foods. Most Australians, especially young males, are blindly trustful about what appears on super market shelves assuming that such products are safe and have undergone sufficient testing, surveys show, with females and older generations being more circumspect. Consumers who have taken a look at GM foods feel that the research conducted into this field is biased as it is conducted by scientists commissioned by companies who stand to gain billions of dollar from GM foods.