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Unlike in the case of irradiated food, where we still have some protection in the sense that the National Food Authority says that it is illegal to offer irradiated food for sale in Australia, there are moves to allow approvals for genetically altered food products in Australia. There are also, in my view, quite worrying trends which suggest that the National Food Authority is moving against a labelling standard for genetically altered food. One of the major producers of potato crisps in Australia, and in Britain, has put a lot of money into a new potato, a genetically altered potato which will produce, the proponents argue, a better potato crisp. That product is imminent in the Australian market. Consumer advocates are of the view that it is likely to be approved, but approved without a warning label.

It is interesting that this debate, in other parts of the world, is rather more advanced - not, I would have to say, as a result of government action, but as a result of very strong lobbying and activity from the consumer movement and the popular press. In Britain, they have got to a situation recently, I am advised by the Australian Consumers Association, in which one of the largest grocery wholesaling chains in Britain, a chain that controls about a third of the distribution market in the United Kingdom, has voluntarily agreed that it will label genetically altered foods. While that is a very responsible position for a UK food distributor and wholesaler to take, it is regrettable and a regrettable abdication of responsibility by government that the consumer is to be advised of genetically altered food only because of the action of a socially responsible wholesaler rather than the action of government. The ACT has the opportunity in this legislation to require that genetically altered food be advised.

One of the more disturbing aspects of genetically altered food is that even the most concerned consumer advocates are not actually saying that the genetically altered potato crisp is likely to have any great problems, but there certainly is debate about some of the use of growth agents in meat products. There has been a lot of research work on genetically altered pig meat products. Again, without being a scientist, an argument which I have heard and which seems to me to make sense is that, given the nature of genetically engineered animal growth encouragers - what is the opposite to a growth inhibitor; a growth encourager, a growth agent?

Mr De Domenico: A growth enhancer.

MR CONNOLLY: A growth enhancer. Probably at the embryonic stage the pigs will be treated; they will be produced; they will grow; they will meet their maker at the abattoir; and they will appear on our bacon shelf, and we will eat the pig. The next generation of pig will be treated. It is very unlikely that we will have long-term, longitudinal studies of how the use of genetic growth enhancers may affect the pig. Given that we do not know how it is going to affect several generations of pig, there is a question as to why we are exposing it to future generations of humans, because we will be consuming this product. Unless we put up the signposts, we will be consuming it without being informed.

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