Firms need to raise their GMO game, says expert

Food manufacturers are “burying their heads in the sand” when it comes to dealing with genetically modified organisms (GMOs), a leading supply chain assurance expert has warned.

Speaking at a conference on food contaminants organised by the Society of Food Hygiene and Technology, Cert-ID Europe md Richard Werran said many firms were not conducting sufficiently rigorous risk assessments of their suppliers or supply chains to ensure that they were complying with the law - both in terms of labelling products containing authorised GMOs and avoiding unauthorised GMOs.

“It’s like driving around without a tax disc,” he said. “Eventually you are going to get caught.”

Many manufacturers did not scrutinise suppliers carefully enough about GMOs when carrying out audits or questionnaires, he added. “There is actually no legal definition of IP [identity preservation], and pretty often non-GMO status is simply based on self-declaration. There is also an over-reliance on testing for GM materials instead of using a HACCP-based [hazard analysis critical control point] approach to avoid them in the first place.”

He added: “Instead of asking whether suppliers’ IP systems have been validated by an independent third party, or asking probing questions about where they are sourcing raw materials from and how they are handled, manufacturers often bury their heads in the sand and hope that the authorities or customers are too busy with other things to worry about GM. What we often hear is things like, ‘We don’t buy rice from the US because of GM; we get it from Thailand.’ The problem is that that rice might be sourced from Thailand but is then imported into the Netherlands and co-mingled with GM varieties from the US - which rather defeats the purpose.”

The labelling threshold for the adventitious (accidental or technically unavoidable) presence of authorised GMOs was 0.9%, said Werren. However, many manufacturers did not appreciate that if lower levels of GMOs were detected - say 0.5% - they still had to prove that their presence was accidental, he said. “The problem is, we’re seeing constant levels of contamination at 0.5-0.7%, which can’t really be described as adventitious.”

As for unauthorised GMOs, an increasing number of manufacturers were going to run into problems unless they upped their game, he said. “Unauthorised GMOs [GMOs approved in the US, Latin America and Asia, but not yet in Europe] are finding their way into foods all over the UK, from rice noodles and ready meals containing [the banned GMO] Bt63 to soy contaminated with banned GM maize.”

Contrary to recent press reports, there was in fact “good availability” of non-GM soy from Brazil, he added. There was also an organisation of growers - the Brazilian Association of non-GM Producers, or Abrange - dedicated to growing non-GM beans. “The UK feed industry is saying that we’re running out of non-GM beans and prices will get out of control - but it says that every year. The real problem is that customers say they want non-GM but they won’t forward commit.”