Opponents, including many other scientists, enviromentalists, and consumer activists, say GMOs can destroy the environment, make people sick, and further concentrate control of world food production in the hands of an ever-shrinking number of multinational corporations. The problem, say critics like environmental lawyer Miriam Mayet, is that GMOs have been channelled into the food chain at a pace that has outstripped the ability of governments to either regulate them, or address the concerns of opponents. GMOs have not, for example, been subjected to environmental impact assessments in South Africa. Apart from the environmental concerns, GMOs raise a number of health concerns. Dr Harris Steinman of the SA Allergen Society says that chief among these is the effect the new foods will have on the nature and extent of allergic reactions among consumers.
Allergic reactions can be extremely mild, or deadly.
An easy, though expensive, way to reduce unexpected allergic reactions would be to label foods containing GMOs, and to test the products as rigorously as are new medicines. Vocal environmental and consumer lobbies oppose GMOs in the US and the European Union. But attempts to make labelling internationally mandatory have been bedeviled by US government and producer opposition in the United Nations' food safety agency, the Codex Alimentarius Commission. The Bill is only scheduled to take effect on December 1, but even this will not make GMO labelling mandatory. While Sagene currently oversees the application process for local GMO experimentation and the general release of GMO products, South Africa currently has no means of forcing international producers to disclose when they are importing foods containing GMOs.