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FSANZ’s ‘assessment’ process does not consist of independent testing. It merely examines the data provided by the applicants themselves — the chemical companies Monsanto, Aventis, Syngenta, DuPont and Dow Agrosciences.

The data provided by these chemical companies does not test for any medium or long-term effects of these foods on animals, let alone humans, but is instead based on short-term trials – often with small sample sizes.

"The fundamental problem of the way in which GM foods have been approved is that they haven't really been tested properly at all..."

Dr. Erik Millstone

Phil Angell, director of corporate communications at Monsanto is on record as admitting, "Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible”.

Few funds are available to examine the plethora of health and environmental issues that remain unresolved around GE foods. The biotech industry meanwhile continues to assure us that we should have no concerns.

Few scientists are willing to brave the wilderness that confronts them should they interfere with or question the current process. However, independent and peer reviewed literature is beginning to demonstrate that the approval process for GE foods worldwide is fundamentally flawed.

FSANZ regularly defends the safety of GE foods, asserting that GE foods are no different from non-GE varieties – based on the concept of ‘substantial equivalence’. However, as Dr Judy Carman from the Public Health Association clearly shows in her article Human Health Safety Assessment, none of these GE foods have undergone independent safety testing.

FSANZ has allowed 19 GE crops and their derivatives in Australian food. These range from soybeans and corn, to sugarbeet, potatoes and cotton.

FSANZ is also responsible for Australia’s GE labelling laws, which came into force in December 2001. Astoundingly, the basis for these laws is whether or not actual GE protein (DNA) can be detected in the final food product. If DNA is found, the GE ingredient must be labelled wherever used. Where DNA cannot be found with current technology, the GE ingredient is not required to be labelled.

Basically, the laws do not tell us whether GE has been used at any point along the food chain. Examples of GE products that don’t require GE labelling include:

• Highly refined GE ingredients (eg: cooking oils, sugars, starches) and foods containing these refined ingredients (eg: most processed foods fall into this category as they contain some kind of oil or starch);
• Foods where ingredients come from animals fed with GE feed (eg: meat, milk, eggs or honey);
• Foods that are ‘unintentionally’ GE contaminated by up to 1 per cent per ingredient;
• Foods that contain GE flavours present at less than 0.1 per cent; and
• Foods that use GE processing aids or food additives (eg: the common cheese-making ingredient ‘chymosin’ is itself genetically engineered);

FSANZ excluded foods prepared at bakeries, restaurants, takeaways and so on from the laws.

Greenpeace calls on FSANZ to follow the Biosafety Protocol when assessing GE foods and implementing labelling laws.

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The Federal Office of the Gene Technology Regulator (OGTR), which regulates all intentional releases of live viable organisms that have been modified by techniques of gene technology, has come under constant criticism.