Chefs continue to sign up to boycott GM food

 

ABC Rural - Australia

Wednesday, 24/09/2008

 

More Australian chefs have signed an agreement to not use genetically modified food, with Canberra chefs the latest to join Greenpeace's national campaign.

 

It follows a Newspoll study which found 90 per cent of consumers want better labelling of food products.

 

It is also prompted by the first commercial crops of GM food in Australia, glyphosate tolerant canola which is being grown in NSW and Victoria.

 

Greenpeace's GM campaigner Michelle Sheather says all food is derived from animals that have been given GM stock feed.

 

"Well the real issue is there is no research," she says.

 

"There's no research anywhere on the planet on human health studies and the impacts on the gm food on human health.

 

"In Australia we have no health studies, on studies of rats over a number of generations because if rats over 3 or 5 generations are fed g-m foods the evidence would be much stronger than over a one generation of trial."

 

Dr TJ Higgins from the CSIRO's Plant Industries disagrees.

 

He says Greenpeace is picking up on studies that haven't been peer reviewed and the next five years will see the release of drought tolerant gm crops that are safe to eat.

 

abc.net.au