Health & Fitness
Taiwan Bans GMOs From School Lunches & Mandates GMO Labeling
Why can Taiwan do what American cannot? Taiwan has already passed and implemented a nationwide law to protect its citizens from GMOs.
Nearly a full year ago, Taiwan passed Food Act Amendments that achieve remarkable food safety milestones. This places Taiwan far ahead of the United States in the category of food safety.
These Milestones Include:
1) Requiring the mandatory labeling of GMOs on all food products that contain 3% or more GMOs. Foods that use no GMOs may be labeled “non-GMO” and many already are, causing their sales to skyrocket across Taiwan. Just last year, imports of non-GMO soybeans to Taiwan grew nearly 300% to 58,000 tons.
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2) Taiwan is also limiting the use of food additives to just 799 compounds approved by the Taiwan FDA. The FDA of the United States, by comparison, allows tens of thousands of chemicals to be used as additives, even when some are associated with an increased chance to cause cancer.
3) All GMO ingredients are required to be registered with the Taiwan government and food manufacturers that use GMOs are required to establish an origins tracking system to identify where those GMOs originated.
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4) All the soy milk, tofu, miso and other soy-derived products sold everywhere across the country, including at cafes and street food vendors, must be clearly labeled as GMOs if they use genetically modified soy.
5) Food products made using genetically modified soy as a processing agent or blended ingredient must also label their final food products as GMO, even if the soybean oil is not, itself, the final product.
6) Fines for violating these food safety provisions are steep.
Taiwan Bans GMOs From School Menus:
In yet another milestone for food safety, Taiwan has banned GMOs from school lunches.
“The latest amendments to the School Health Act are aimed at all school meal providers, to ban genetically modified raw ingredients and any processed foods that contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs) from school menus,” reports the China Post.
Congratulations to Taiwan for setting an example that the we can hopefully implement in the near future.