GM Food Surveillance

In Germany, the federal states are responsible for official food surveillance. Each of the 16 states has established at least one laboratory for analysing foods for their content of GMOs and, thereby, for their compliance with labelling regulations. Each year, thousands of foods are tested.

The individual results vary from state to state and year to year - but there is a clear trend:

• Regulations on the labelling of GMOs largely are observed. Infringements are limited to single exceptions, the number of which is declining. Primarily, foods containing soy or maize are analysed. When GMOs are detected, the amount generally lies far below the labelling threshold of 0.9 percent. When GMO portions above 0.9 percent are measured, this occurs usually in a product containing soy. Mostly these are imported products sold outside the major food store chains. Examples are a paste of soy beans from Japan, "pizza ham", Asian noodle soups, and cookies from Russia.

• Products infringing the labelling directives have been removed from the market.

• Foods with GM labelling hardly are found. Usually, these are not tested systematically by food inspectors.

• Small amounts of GMO were detected in an average of 15 to 25 per cent of the analysed foods containing soy. Detected amounts lay below the labelling threshold of 0.9 per cent and often were close to the detection limit of 0.1 per cent. In past years, the share of GMO-positive samples has increased.

• For foods containing maize, the trend is in the opposite direction. At most, nine percent of all samples were GM-positive in the years addressed and only 5 percent displayed positive results in 2006.

• For foods containing maize, labelling infringements also are rare. German producers receive maize mainly from European countries, in which GM maize rarely is cultivated.