India: GM food labelling now in force

In India, food containing GM content must now be labelled as such. The Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Rules 2011, which came into effect on 1 January 2013, say "every package containing the genetically modified food shall bear at the top of its principal display panel the letters 'GM'." This move has been a long-held demand of consumer groups, but the way it has been done in India has left them disappointed, Mail Online India reports. 

Consumer rights activist Bejon Misra commented that it was a good step, but it is being done without any preparation at all: it is yet unknown how this rule will be implemented or how it will be applied to products with GM content that are being imported or how the violators will be prosecuted. Moreover, merely printing the word GM on labels is not going to serve any purpose, since people may confuse it as an acronym for 'gram'. Bejon Misra continued that the label should explicitly say “this product contains genetically modified ingredients”.

Shivani Shah of Greenpeace pointed out that there were no laboratories to test GM ingredients in processed food in India. The Consumer Coordination Council issued a memorandum to the Consumer Affairs Ministry, stating that the one-line rule would not serve any purpose until a statutory threshold of the presence of GM ingredients was fixed and there was clarity about the roles and responsibilities of implementation agencies. More information is available here.