Labeling of genetic foods may increase food prices, experts and politicians have warned. A forum constituting of scientists, industry players and MPs at the weekend warned that branding of GMOs may hinders efforts to address food insecurity in Kenya. A gazette notice on May 25, announced that all GMO products have to laballed.
The group said the requirement should be reviewed if genetic foods are to serve as alternatives to dwindling food stocks in the country. Millers in the forum said they will incur additional costs to meet the labeling requirements, charges they will have to pass to the already overburdened consumers.
Cereal Millers Association chairman Diamond Lalji said labelling the GMO products in a country where debate on the technology has been quite "politicised at the expense of scientific facts", will hurt trade. "We shall not sell the GM products because by labelling, we are raising questions about the safety of the products. So as, scientists, you have to decide whether GM products are safe or not. If they are not, let's not talk about them altogether," Lalji said.
Speaking at the forum in Kisumu, Joel Ochieng' of the University of Nairobi said research carried out by the institution shows that labelling would have been essential if majority of Kenyans rejected GM products. "However, this is not the case from the 3,529 respondents we studied. Many policies are not informed by research and that is why we can end up with regulations that make life of a low income earner more complicated," Ochieng' said.
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GMO labelling has not increased the cost of food anywhere. Those scaremongers who say it has, should be challenged to present the evidence. We have GM labels in the EU and it hasn't increased food costs. What has happened is that the food companies have withdrawn GM ingredients from the human food supply to avoid the stigma of the GM label.
Here comes another one of those myths. European food prices are very high on a world scale, some of which is due to the cost of segregation of GM- and non-GM-products. Who do you think pays for all the testing and for the endless paper trails? All just to keep the protesters and the so-called "organic" lobby in business. The sooner we have open access to GM the better and we no more need labels than we do for food produced from mutagenised plants, untested, unregulated and unlabelled.