Food risks and labeling controversies

QUESTIONS ABOUT FOOD SAFETY AND REGULATION abound, among them: How safe are biotech foods-foods derived from gene-spliced organisms? Should they be labeled? Should herbal dietary supplements continue to be exempt from federal regulation of safety, effectiveness, and labeling?

The European Union

passed legislation in late 1998 requiring labeling to identify all foods containing genetically modified (i.e., gene-spliced) ingredients, which caused large retailers to remove all such foods from their shelves. Responding to those events and to intimidation by Greenpeace, two of the United States' largest producers of baby food, Heinz and Gerber, have announced that they will use only nonbiotech ingredients in their products. Demonstrators in Europe and the United States have protested the marketing of biotech foods. And fearing that many or most U.S. consumers will reject biotech foods, some U.S. farmers have canceled orders for genetically engineered seeds.

The professional risk analysis community believes that biotech foods are just more precisely constructed versions of plants engineered with other long-established techniques. Mandatory labeling of foods to indicate the presence of gene-spliced products would incorrectly signal to consumers that the government believes there is something to worry about-or, at least, that there is something fundamentally different about such products. The Food and Drug Administration's oversight of biotech foods-which is based on potential risk, not the use of certain techniques-is appropriate and adequate to ensure food safety.