Better science means safer food

FOOD: During the past several months, there have been two-high profile outbreaks of E. coli - related illness traced to spinach and lettuce, respectively. Current tally is three deaths and approximately 300 illnesses reported in United States of America.

These kinds of incidents are ordinarily investigated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease and Control and prevention (CDC), but for some reason and in the absence of any hint of criminal behaviour - the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) also became involved in the spinach investigation.

The outbreak seems to be over and Popeye's favourite food is now back on store shelves and restaurant menus. Will consumer buy it? They may be want their spinach back, but they also want an answer to an important question: Is it safe this Genetically Modified Organism.

There is a limit to how safe we can make agriculture, given that it is an outdoor activity and subject to all manner of unpredictable challenges. If the goal is to make a field 100 percent safe from contamination, it's not possible in modern farming operation.

It has also become painfully clear that we can't rely on processors to remove the pathogens from food in every case.

Sri Lanka was one of the first countries to ban the importation, manufacture and sale of GM food from September 1, 2001. The ban was however indefinitely postponed due to protest from the US government and commerce chambers in Sri Lanka.

After years of debate and discussion government decided to enforce labelling of GM food products from January 2007. Under new rules by the Health Ministry, all GM food or food that includes GM organisms must be labelled to state that they are GM modified.

If the products are GM or contain GM organisms, the sellers or importers have to specify so. If they fail to do so they are liable to pay a fine.

Director, Food Control Unit, Health Ministry, P. Madarasinghe says that any food products likely to fall into the GM category but are declared by the importer as 'GM-free' must be certified by the Chief Food Authority (CFA) Dr. Athula Kahandaliyanage, who is also the country's Director General of Health.

Unfortunately the law is excellent for protect the Sri Lankan Nation by preventing from such as E-coli outbreak in USA.

Under the earlier September 1 ban, the government issued a list of crops that could potentially contain GM food and importers were required to obtain approval for all related food items.

That list includes soy, wheat, tomatoes and potatoes. Under the current labelling rules, however, there is no such list. I totally agree with the list and there may be lot more to go in imported food products.

Unfortunately we do not have standards on it, such as who is going to issue the certificate. Then authenticated GM certificate number and who is the agent; those must appeared on the food pack, sorry to say even to date I didn't observed proper labelling products in Sri Lankan market.

GM testing is an easy procedure, extracting the plant genome and then identifies the plasmid present or not by a simple Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR). Genetically Modified Organisms are created with the help of the plasmids.

All laboratories which consist with a PCR machine can do this experiment easily; to verify GM food 100 percent accurately. Genetech is the only private lab which conducts GM testing at the movement.

Finally I would like to emphasis is CFA should implement a straight forward labelling techniques to imported food items, stating it's free from GMO. I'm not betting the labelling on the all farm products as GMO; after all, admitting labelling is must in imported food product.

Faiz Marikar, Ph.D., Department of Bio Technology and Bio Informatics, Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology