Q&A :: GMO-free? Label it!

Natural or engineered in a lab − activists at the Civil Affairs Institute believe consumers should be able to make informed choices on what they throw in their shopping carts. The organisation is thus on a quest to introduce the labeling of GMO-free foods in Poland.

"The consumers have the right to know how their food is produced along the entire production chain," says Dorota Metera, member of the GMO Committee to the Polish Environment Ministry, who endorses the "GMO-free? I want to know" campaign.

"And this is our aim: to convince the politicians, the traders, supermarkets and the producers to provide a clear picture of how the food is produced," she told Q&A host Alicja Baczyńska.

Under European law, all foods that contain more than 0.9 percent of biotech ingredients require labeling. This does not, however, include lab-produced enzymes or vitamins used in food production, nor GM animal feed consumed by livestock, which is later used to manufacture a whole array of meat and dairy products.

European member states import over 30 million tones of soy and soybean meal annually, 90 percent of which is genetically engineered, according to data produced by the European Commission.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, 13 October, the European Parliament's environment committee rejected the proposal to allow individual member states to ban the trade and use of biotech food and animal feed, citing EU's free movement of goods.