GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS

GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS:

(Impact on health): 16.

Ms Denise Phua Lay Peng asked the Minister for National Development (a)

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what is the long-term impact of genetically modified (GM) foods on our health; (b) which developed countries are issuing GM warnings on food packagings; and (c) whether his Ministry is prepared to implement similar warnings.

The Minister for National Development (Mr Mah Bow Tan): Mr Speaker, Sir, there is international consensus that GM food is safe for consumption. Various international scientific organisations have extensively reviewed the safety of GM food over many years. All GM food are subject to rigorous risk assessments to ensure that they are safe for human consumption before they are allowed to be sold in the international market.

GM food is governed by guidelines at both international and country levels. The international guidelines for assessing the safety of food derived from genetically modified organisms are issued by the Codex Alimentarius Commission, which is the international reference body for food standards which Singapore is a member of.

For Singapore, we have set up a Genetic Modification Advisory Committee (GMAC), which was established in 1999 to oversee and advise on the research and development, production, use, handling and release of GM organisms in Singapore, and it sets the guidelines for the import, release and use of GM products here.

In assessing and approving GM foods for consumption in Singapore, the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) follows the guidelines of both Codex Alimentarius as well as GMAC.

The labelling of GM food is a complex issue and, so far, there has been no consensus reached at the international level as to whether labelling should be compulsory or not. As approved GM foods are safe, there is no need for health

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warnings on the labels of GM food. Some countries do practise this and, where it is practised, the labelling of GM food is done to provide consumers with choice, and not for food safety reasons. Some of the countries that do ask for labelling of food include Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

Singapore’s position on GM food labelling is in line with international requirements. As mandatory labelling of GM food is currently not an international practice, making it compulsory will curtail our sources of supply and increase food prices. Nevertheless, AVA and GMAC will continue to monitor international developments closely to ensure that our labelling requirements are up to date. We are working closely with the Codex Committee on Food Labelling to develop acceptable guidelines on the labelling of GM food. The Codex guidelines are expected to take several years to finalise.

Although our current Food Regulations do not require GM food to be specially labelled, GM food, like all other food products, must meet existing food labelling requirements with regard to ingredient listing and information to facilitate tracing and recall. I would like to assure the House that food available in Singapore, including GM food, is safe for consumption.

Dr Lim Wee Kiak: Mr Speaker, Sir, I would like to ask the Minister regarding the supply of food products, since the Senior Minister of State has reassured this House that we have enough rice. But I also notice that there has been a general increase in prices of poultry, meat, vegetables as well as seafood products. So, Singaporeans are generally very worried about whether we will be getting enough supplies. Can the Minister address this?

Mr Mah Bow Tan: Mr Speaker, Sir, I thank the Member for the question. I would like to assure Members that there

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is no shortage of fresh food products, such as meat, fish, vegetables, eggs, and so on. The AVA and MND have been monitoring the situation very closely. We have looked at the import figures over the last couple of months and, so far, the import figures suggest that the situation of imports of fresh produce is healthy and stable. We looked at last year's figures as well, and the two sets of figures are quite comparable, which seems to suggest that there has been no sharp spike in the demand. Feedback from the importers also indicates to us that there is no difficulty for them to get adequate supplies from their various sources.

But that is as far as availability is concerned. As for prices, I think the Member is correct to say that prices have increased. They have trended upwards over the last year or so, due mainly to several reasons – higher production cost, input costs, such as fuel prices, transportation cost, raw material cost. The cost of feed grain, for example, has gone up sharply. So, while we do not expect any sharp spike in prices over the next few months, we do expect that this trend of prices increasing in the near future will continue.

Let me also inform Members that we are not taking this lightly. We are not saying that we are just going to wait for prices to go up. There has been a concerted effort on the part of the various agencies, ie, AVA, together with IE Singapore and others, to diversify our sources of supply as much as we can. That is our strategy. We will identify and accredit countries as well as individual suppliers, eg, farms, abattoirs, and so on, to supply to Singapore. And accreditation means that we actually go there and check their health and food safety standards before we accredit the farms. But once we accredit the farms, they will then be put on the list of accredited suppliers to Singapore.

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Just to give Members an idea of how many such establishments there are. To date, we have more than 600 establishments spread over 26 countries accredited to supply Singapore with different types of products, eg, meat, fish, vegetables, etc. For meat products, just to give Members an example, we have added Chile to our list recently, and Chile will now be accredited to export frozen pork as well as poultry to Singapore. We have added the Philippines to export frozen pork to Singapore recently. For big countries like China and Brazil, we are also accrediting different regions and provinces. If we look at China, 34 provinces, it is possible for us to approach each province to accredit establishments, eg, abattoirs, farms, etc, to export to Singapore. For example, Liaoning was recently approved to supply frozen pork to Singapore.

We are also working with the industry to explore the possibility or viability of different ways of bringing the fresh food produce to Singapore. A good example is Australia. We have been importing chilled pork, or what they call "airpork", which is airfreighted to Singapore. We are now looking at the possibility of seafreighted pork, what they call "seapork" to Singapore. Whether it is viable or not, they are looking at it.

All these measures are taken to ensure that we have as wide a variety of choices as possible from as many countries as possible, and using many different methods of importation. We not only import eggs from Malaysia. Members may remember the scare when we had the bird flu and had to stop the import of eggs from Malaysia. We are now importing eggs from New Zealand, Australia, USA and Japan. So, if there is a disruption in supply from any one source country, we are able to shift to other source countries. Likewise, for vegetables, our source

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includes not just China but India, Indonesia and Australia, in addition to our traditional suppliers from Malaysia and, of course, our local farms. Fish we import from all over the world, eg, Italy, Norway, India, China, South Africa and New Zealand. In a recent trade mission to proactively seek out new sources, AVA managed to secure new sources of supply of seafood from Namibia. So Namibia has now joined the list of food suppliers to Singapore. They are now interested in diversifying from just exporting fish to other fresh produce as well.

Apart from that, internally, we are working with the importers on business contingency plans, just like in the case of rice, where we have got buffer stocks. In the case of fresh produce, we are not able to keep two or three months' stock. Imagine trying to keep two or three months' stock. So what we do with the suppliers is that we work with them to keep a small buffer stock ranging from about several weeks to maybe one month or so, to tide over short-term disruptions in supply.

Last but not least, let me round this up by emphasising a very important player in keeping our food prices stable, and that is the consumer. The consumer can play a very important part, taking control of the situation, be an informed and educated consumer, look at different choices and options, and go for those options which make good sense and value for money. Recently, as Members may notice, AVA has been conducting a campaign to encourage consumers to switch from fresh meat to frozen meat. It has been a very successful campaign, so much so that the chilled pork sellers in our wet markets are complaining that demand is coming down. But that is one way for consumers, eg, housewives and the man-in-the-street, to take control of the situation. Rather than paying for high prices that are being asked for, try to switch to something else. If we switch,

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for example, from fresh to frozen pork, we are easily able to save something like 15%-20%. For some cuts like chicken wings, drumsticks, we can even get it 50% cheaper, because of the greater availability of supply.

To round up this answer, I just want to reassure Members again that there is no shortage of fresh food, there is no need to be concerned about availability, but we are subject to market forces, we cannot control prices. If there is an upward price pressure because of external factors, we have to live with it or, better still, let us look for alternatives. But, meanwhile, be assured that the Government is monitoring the situation and working with the industry to ensure that supply is available and resilient.

Ms Denise Phua Lay Peng (Jalan Besar): Sir, I would like to return to the topic of genetically modified food before it is hijacked by Dr Lim. The positive comments that are said about GM food have also been said about foods containing trans fat. Given that there is literature that suggests that the findings are not conclusive about the benefits or danger of GM food and also the fact that the Ministry is not prepared to institute warnings and so forth, would AVA or the Ministry consider putting up more educational materials or updates so that our people can be more assured and can make informed choices as they choose their food?

Mr Mah Bow Tan: That is a good suggestion. The jury is still out as to whether GM foods are safe or not safe. We have looked at all the current literature, and we believe that there is no conclusive evidence that they are not safe. However, there are strong advocates on the issue of trans fats, for example, that there is a clear danger. So we are monitoring the situation very closely. It is a good idea that Ms Denise Phua has brought up, and I will certainly

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ask AVA to look at it and see how we can disseminate more literature on this very important topic.

Mr Zaqy Mohamad (Hong Kah): Sir, I would like to ask two questions. One, on the diversification of sources and control of prices of meat, does the Ministry also look at halal meat as an indicator too? My second question is, moving away from GM foods, today we are also talking about meat from cloned animals, ie, from clones. What is the Ministry's position? There is talk out there that they are looking at cloning animals for meat purposes. Is there a study into this?

Mr Mah Bow Tan: I am not aware that there have been a lot of cloned animals coming into the market, but we will certainly keep a look-out for it. The most important thing is that we have got a system in place that monitors the import of meats at source as well as when they come to Singapore. So there is a random checking process that checks the meat that is coming in, laboratory testing, etc. As a result of this, we are fairly confident that everything that comes into Singapore for consumption by Singaporeans is safe.

When it comes to the GM foods, in consultation with GMAC and our international partners, eg, Codex Alimentarius, we have been trying to determine a position to take as far as the GM foods are concerned. For every research article that suggests that GM foods are unsafe, there is another one that says that they are safe. In fact, the US and Canada, for example, opposes this issue of labelling because they feel that GM foods are safe and are actually part and parcel of the current food technology research and development that is going ahead.

As far as halal

food is concerned, yes, the price and the resilience of supply of halal meats is also being monitored by AVA.