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by Florence Wickramage

Despite continuous representations made to the Ministry of Health to re-introduce the ban on genetically modified food, the Ministry is still silent on the issue, Hemantha Vithanage, Executive Director of the Environmental Foundation Ltd (EFL) told the Daily News yesterday.

Genetically Modified food such as Cooking Oil, Chocolates, Cheese, Soya products and Potato products are still freely available in the market. Research on GM food has found that they contain allergenic, toxic substances which are potent enough to endanger life and reduce body immunity and even fertility.

On the advice of the Food Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Health, legislation was brought in to ban GM foods in Sri Lanka due to the high risk such foods can cause to public health. This move even received international acclaim. Later the government decided to call off the ban on pressure from certain foreign embassies in the country.

Mr. Vithanage said that countries like the USA, Australia and the European communities adopt a number of mechanisms both legal and scientific, to control such food but Sri Lanka unfortunately lacks such facilities. Certain countries have imposed a requirement that GM and non GM foods be labelled while some other countries require a risk assessment on foods imported to their markets.

Mr. Hemantha Vithanage said that even though the GM food ban was lifted by the last government, the Environmental Foundation had made fresh representations to the present Minister of Health and were still awaiting a response.

Mr. S. Nagaiah, Chief Food and Drugs Inspector of the Food Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Health told the Daily News yesterday that they were exploring the modalities of a labelling process for GM foods in the market. He said they would be submitting their proposals shortly to the Minister of Health for further action on this issue.

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