Gene-altered food rules on the table
NJamie Morton
science ew Zealand’s food standards watchdog is reviewing how rules might apply to a new generation of products that can be altered genetically, but without any introduced DNA.
Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) yesterday released a consultation paper around how laws should apply to food derived from new breeding techniques, or NBTs.
NBTs are a wide set of new technologies being developed and applied in plant and animal breeding, with similar approaches being explored in medicine.
But there were questions over whether such foods were “food produced using gene technology” and thus could not be sold or used as an ingredient under FSANZ’s current code, unless listed in a special schedule.
That uncertainty was because some of these new techniques could be used to make certain changes to the genome, or genetic make-up, of an organism without permanently introducing any new DNA.
The organism from which the food for sale was obtained could therefore contain genome changes, yet not any new DNA, meaning NBT foods could appear similar to those made using conventional methods.
Foods derived using conventional breeding were generally considered to have a long history of safe use, and were not typically subject to premarket safety assessment before entering the food supply.
While the code made a clear distinction between conventional breeding techniques and those involving gene technology, there had been debate over the nature of risks associated with foods using NBT and whether they needed to be assessed and approved before hitting the market.
Options ranged from treating them like conventional breeding techniques — given a green light once a technique has been proved safe — or treating them like current genetically modified organisms with each application requiring a rigorous safety assessment.
The agency’s chief executive, Mark Booth, said a range of new plant and animal breeding techniques have been developed since FSANZ’s standard around foods using gene technology was introduced nearly 20 years ago.
“We have been monitoring these techniques and working with experts to understand how foods produced using them should be regulated by food laws.”
But, at this stage, FSANZ wasn’t proposing any changes to the code, nor was it considering any labelling issues.
People had until April 12 to make submissions.