CHILE: Defending Consumers’ Rights to Information and Choice on GM Products

By Daniela Estrada Reprint | | Print |

Daniela Estrada

SANTIAGO, Mar 15 2005 (IPS) - Lilia Lizama, a 60-year-old homemaker in the capital of Chile, only learned about the existence of transgenic foods a few months ago. "I was at my sister’s house and the subject just happened to come up. They told me that there are foods that have been modified and could cause cancer," she told IPS.

Lilia Lizama, a 60-year-old homemaker in the capital of Chile, only learned about the existence of transgenic foods a few months ago. "I was at my sister’s house and the subject just happened to come up. They told me that there are foods that have been modified and could cause cancer," she told IPS.

"I was shocked and scared, because when I buy food, I have no way of knowing if it’s natural or transgenic," she added.

The Chilean government does not inform consumers about transgenic foods nor does it require that they be labelled as such.

That is despite the fact that a majority of people in this South American country are opposed to genetically modified foods, and want any products containing them to be clearly marked, as demonstrated by a recent survey released by the local chapter of the international environmental group Greenpeace.

Mandatory labelling of transgenic food products was the main demand put forward by the non-governmental organisation Consumers International (CI), which made genetically modified foods the focus of this year’s World Consumer Rights Day, celebrated in 115 countries on Tuesday.

According to the survey, released Mar. 11 in Santiago, 53.5 percent of respondents know about or have heard of transgenic foods, 58.5 percent would prefer not to consume products that contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and 95.9 percent believe that products containing GMOs should be clearly labelled.

To publicise these findings, Greenpeace Chile organised a rally just metres away from the La Moneda palace, the seat of the national government in Santiago. The demonstration featured two life-sized puppets representing President Ricardo Lagos and Economy Minister Jorge Rodríguez Grossi with their hands over their ears.

Greenpeace and other environmental groups accuse the Economy Ministry, responsible for the Biotechnology Policy adopted in 2002 and the drafting of a bill aimed at regulating the sector, of failing to include the general public in discussions of this issue.

In Chile, the only regulation of GMOs is based on a 1993 resolution passed by the government’s Agriculture and Cattle Farming Service. The decision authorised the importing of transgenic seeds for cultivation and subsequent export, an activity that is currently limited to less than 8,000 hectares of farmland.

There are no restrictions on the importing of transgenic ingredients or food products for domestic consumption, nor any requirements for products containing GMOs to be labelled as such.

These matters were to be addressed through legislation that the government was planning to submit to Congress in 2004, but which ended up being shelved due to the opposition of lawmakers from the ruling centre-left coalition.

"The government has disregarded all of our opinions, which is why we have come here to present it with the information revealed by the survey, so that it can be incorporated in the law that is being handled behind closed doors," Juan Carlos Cuchacovich, Greenpeace Chile’s genetic engineering coordinator, told IPS.

According to José Vargas, director of the CI Latin American and Caribbean regional office, "When the government began to study the transgenics issue, it appeared to take a real interest in the views of civil society organisations, but as the drafting of the bill moved forward, we were shut out."

Consumers International, a federation of 250 organisations in 115 countries, chose World Consumer Rights Day to step up its global campaign against GMOs, which kicked off last October in Bangkok on the eve of the Second Global Forum of Food Safety Regulators.

"Organisations around the world are using this day to call for mandatory labelling of transgenic foods, in compliance with the public’s right to information and freedom of choice," Vargas commented to IPS. In more than 100 countries, including Chile, local groups focused attention on this issue by holding marches, press conferences and other events and distributing information to the public.

Transgenic or genetically modified foods are developed by transferring genes between unrelated species, for example, from animals to plants. Often, a bacteria or virus is used as the vector to carry a new gene into a cell.

The effects of this genetic engineering on the environment and human health have still not been fully determined, although the dangers already envisioned include the development of bacteria resistant to the antibiotics most commonly used in humans.

Last year, approximately 8.25 million farmers in 17 countries planted transgenic crops, according to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications, an industry-funded organisation.

The United States, Canada, Argentina, Brazil and China account for 96.5 percent of the world’s GMO crops, made up primarily of soy, maize, cotton and canola. There are no requirements for the labelling of transgenic foods in the United States, Canada or Argentina.

CI is pushing for the adoption of mandatory comprehensive labelling of genetically modified foods by national governments and the Codex Alimentarius Commission, created in 1963 by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and World Health Organisation (WHO) to develop food standards and guidelines.

Moreover, the federation is advocating the use of "positive labelling", which identifies the existence of genetically modified content, as opposed to "negative labelling", which denotes its absence (such as "Free of GMOs").

In addition, the regulations should include meat and dairy products from animals given feed containing GMOs.

Vargas pointed to the rules adopted by the European Union, in force since October 2003, which demand the labelling of all foods containing, consisting of or derived from genetically modified ingredients, whether or not these can be detected in the final product.

"We believe that denying people the opportunity to know what they are eating is a lack of democracy, because democracy is built on the basis of transparency and information," said Cuchacovich.

"The government should say why it refuses to listen to the public. Obviously, we have our suspicions, because it seems to us that there are major economic interests behind all of this," he added.

Vargas noted that public awareness on this issue is limited in Chile, "and that’s largely the government’s fault, because it hasn’t developed any informational or educational programmes," he said.

"Consumers have to be more demanding when they make purchases, we social organisations have to continuing publicising the data available to us, and the authorities have to design policies that respond to the people’s needs," Vargas stressed.

The lack of information and awareness on the part of the Chilean public also extends to other issues affecting human health, such as the use and abuse of pesticides in agriculture, hormones in poultry farming and antibiotics in the dairy industry, he added.