Cape Town - Laboratory tests have shown that many brands of bread on South African shelves contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
But consumers would not know that they were eating GM bread because most brands do not carry GMO labels. This week the African Centre for Biosafety, an NGO which campaigns against the genetic engineering of food in Africa, released results of tests, conducted for them by the University of the Free State’s GMO testing facility, on eight popular brands of white bread.
Seven contained GM soya, an ingredient of bread. These were Checkers’s white bread, Woolworths’s white bread, Spar white bread, Premier Foods’ Blue Ribbon white bread, Pick n Pay white bread, Tiger Brands’ Albany superior white bread and Foodcorp’s Sunbake white bread. The only brand to carry a GMO label was Woolworths’s bread, which said: “May be genetically modified”.
Mariam Mayet, director of the African Centre for Biosafety, said the law required food containing any GMO products to be labelled as such.
“They are flouting the law. We have a petition about this and you can see the public is concerned. GMO in bread strikes a nerve. Everyone eats bread. You put bread in your children’s lunch boxes. Consumers have a right to know if bread has GM ingredients so they can choose whether to eat it,” Mayet said.
Zakiyya Ismail of the African Centre for Biosafety said while the companies tested were “at pains to convince the public they are in favour of protecting the rights of consumers”, they either failed to label GM bread or carried misleading and confusing labels. Some were also lobbying government to weaken the GMO labelling regulations under the Consumer Protection Act.
The only bread that was virtually free of GM content was Pioneer Food’s Sasko white bread, in which the GM content was “so low as to be unquantifiable”. Ironically, this brand was the only one that carried a GMO label which said: “Produced using Genetic Modification”.
Mayet said the law states that any food with a five percent or more GM content must be labelled as such.
However, bread manufacturers say because the soya component is so small, they do not need to label it as containing GMO, irrespective of whether the soya is up to 90 percent GM.
Andrew Nel of Pick n Pay said their bread had less than 0.5 percent soya. It was their policy to use GMO labels when the level was over 5 percent “as per the Consumer Protection Act”.
Checkers’s Sarita van Wyk said their bread also contained only 0.5 percent soya. They had sought clarity from the Department of Trade and Industry and had been told amended labelling regulations would soon be published for comment.
Lauren Wilson of Spar said soya content in the bread “premix” was 3 to 5 percent.
But Mayet said: “If any component of the product has a GM content of 5 percent or more it must be labelled. Companies are acting in bad faith.”
Premier Foods, Foodcorp and Tiger Brands had not replied by late on Thursday.
Cape Times