About 50 percent of the soybean milk and flour consumed in Taiwan comes from genetically modified produce, Chinese-language media reported yesterday, citing a survey by the Council of Agriculture (COA).
The report quoted the COA's claim as saying that, until recently, no nation had ever established a standardized procedure for assessing the safety of genetically modified foods.
Representatives from the COA's Agriculture Chemicals and Toxic Substances Research Institute (藥物毒物試驗所, ACTSRI) said that 35 to 47 percent of the soybean consumed in Taiwan had been genetically modified and the same was true with corn, the report said. Lee Kuo-chin (李國欽), director of the ACTSRI, claimed that while assessing the genetically modified products, one mainly considers their impact upon human health and "the ecological considerations," the report said. Lee stressed that a reliable international "yardstick of safety" has not yet been made available, but detrimental ecological consequences of some products have become evident.
For example, rice genetically modified to be resistant to pollution could potentially cross-breed with other plants to form "super weeds" that no herbicide could kill, Lee said.
The COA is planning to establish Taiwan's first "genetic farm" (
Meanwhile, MacDonald's and other fast food restaurants have denied using any genetically modified products, but importers of European and American products were not able to confirm if their imports contain such products, the report said.
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