All products that were over the threshold level would be labelled as containing GM ingredients. Mehta advocates bar code labels and in-store readers for GM products. The bar code would bring up on-screen information about the product, and could even be linked to a Web site to display additional details. Such bar code reader systems are already in common use for price checking in department stores. Consumers are sophisticated enough to use a bar code, Mehta says.
Interested individuals can look for it.
It would minimize costs, and maximize consumer sovereignty. Even if a consensus to label GM foods is reached in Canada, it will take some time to nail down the parameters. A committee of the Canadian General Standards Board has been wrestling with the labelling issue for more than a year and still has much work to do before issuing a report. Part of the problem is that Canadian regulations define genetically modified organisms more broadly than in other jurisdictions, such as Europe. GM foods there are defined as products of recombinant DNA technology.