Globally, South Africa is the eighth largest producer of GM crops and also imports GM
food. In addition to the promise of increased agricultural production, the introduction
of GM crops is also having an impact on society in terms of consumer acceptance and
trade. As a result, most countries manage GMOs in terms of development, use and
application as well as require mandatory GM labelling for consumer preference. With
an increase in GM developments, monitoring the food chain in terms of GM labelling
and unapproved GM events will continue to pose a regulatory challenge.
The aims of this thesis were the following:
1. To determine the uptake of GM food into the food chain;
2. To study the application of voluntary GM labelling;
3. To investigate the impact of mandatory GM labelling; and
4. To establish a monitoring system to detect illegal GMOs in South Africa.
Until 2005 it was assumed that there were only low levels of GM crop in the food
chain, based on production volumes. However, results from this thesis have shown
that 76% of food products tested positive for the presence of GM in 2005. There was
also no consideration of mandatory GM labelling as it was thought that voluntary GM
labelling was successfully being applied in South Africa. Despite this, 31% of products
labelled to indicate an absence of GM, such as âGMO freeâ, ânon-GMâ and âorganicâ,
contained genetic modification above 1%, and 20% of these contained more than 5%
genetic modification. These results demonstrated the extent of GM in the food chain in South Africa and highlighted the fact that voluntary GM labelling does not protect
consumers against misleading claims.
In 2008, the Consumer Protection Act mandated the labelling of GM in food products
and ingredients. However, there was a lot of uncertainty as to how this would impact
the food industry. The subsequent research on the impact of mandatory GM labelling
in South Africa determined that 67% of maize and 54% of soybean products will have
to be labelled for GM content. In addition to this, GM was also detected in 50% of
products labelled to indicate an absence of GM. Furthermore, results indicated that
the use of either a 1% or 5% threshold does not make a considerable difference in
terms of the number of products implicated. The use of the term âmay contain genetic
modificationâ as suggested by draft regulations to the Consumer Protection Act may
provide a cost effective manner in which GM labelling can be applied in a developing
country similar to South Africa, as it would reduce costs in terms of GM detection. The
draft regulations for the Consumer Protection Act also make provision to indicate the
absence of GM below a threshold that does not included terminology such as âGMO
freeâ or ânon-GMâ. Furthermore, the draft regulations do not require third party
verification and compliance will mainly be self-regulating. The implication of this is
that consumers or consumer groups will become responsible for policing the
application of GM labelling in South Africa.
Finally, this thesis presents a GM monitoring scheme for unapproved GMOs, that
have not been proven safe for human health and/or the environment. The scheme
has the advantage of being cost effective and can be applied to the regulatory
situation in any country, taking approved GM events into consideration. The scheme was applied to off-the-shelf food products in South Africa to determine the presence of
illegal GMOs. Even though no unapproved GM events were detected, a potential
illegal import of GM soybean event A2704-12 was found. It was also found that an
approved GM soybean event was comingled with rice and wheat products, although
not indicated in the ingredients.
The research emanating from this thesis has contributed to inform discussions that
have resulted in the inclusion of mandatory GM labelling in the Consumer Protection
Act 68 of 2008. It is hoped that the research on the application of mandatory GM
labelling and the monitoring for unapproved GM events in the food chain will have a
similar impact on the regulatory system in South Africa.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ufs/oai:etd.uovs.ac.za:etd-10042011-094627 |
| Date | 04 October 2011 |
| Creators | Marx, Gertruida M |
| Contributors | Prof CD Viljoen |
| Publisher | University of the Free State |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en-uk |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.uovs.ac.za//theses/available/etd-10042011-094627/restricted/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University Free State or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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