Label or lose trust, says youth forum
On the eve of the trans-Tasman meeting to determine labelling laws for genetically modified (GM) food in Australia and New Zealand, a science youth forum has urged full identification, arguing that any perceived lack of openness will erode public trust in science.
The latest ANZAAS Youth Forum which is held every six weeks to inform Australia's chief scientist on youth opinion has rejected the concept of thresholds and wants any amount of GM ingredients to appear on the label. According to ANZAAS representative Dr Sue Stocklmayer, tomorrow's labelling decisions could impact on community attitudes towards science as a whole.
Dr Stocklmayer, who is based at ANU's Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, described labelling as "the public face of the GM foods issue".
"Biologists will say a protein is a protein but in the public eye the concerns are not just health related, they are ethical. They want to know about the processes involved in producing food," she told ABC Science Online.
"And young people are concerned about easily accessible information. They want it 'in your face', in the supermarket, on the web, on the phone. They are concerned about any apparent effort to make it difficult to find out what's in food."
The ANZAAS forum is 25 top science students nominated each year by high schools in the Australian Capital Territory.
Dr Stocklmayer has just returned from a science communication meeting held by the British government.
She said the meeting, which included the British science minister Lord Sainsbury (whose grocery chain does not sell GM foods as a result of consumer pressure) was dominated by a concern with the lack of public trust in science in the UK.
"Lack of openness about GM foods which built on the BSE crisis has completely undermined faith in government science there," she said. "The whole of science has been tainted by these issues."
"Other countries don't have this problem at the moment," she said, " but they could if they go down the UK path."
Dr Stocklmayer said that the ANZAAS Youth Forum recommendations raised this issue without prompting from her.
"If we're not open and clear about what's happening about GM foods, we could be in trouble," she said.
"The youth forum said they wanted all scientific information to be accessible and understandable. This may be a pious hope but their intent is clear. They don't want anything to be undeclared. They want to know what is known and not known."
Dr Stocklmayer was disappointed that the government agency devoted to public awareness about biotechnology, Biotechnology Australia appeared to be promoting GM foods.
"They seem to put a very positive spin on it and this is where the lack of openness comes in. There's a lot we don't know about the risks, for example, and we need to say this."