When deciding the regulatory framework on GM food labelling, a number of factors, including trade impact and public concern, have to be taken into account.

In the past public consultation exercise, the majority of views collected are in support of mandatory labelling, and the presence of GM content in any ingredient of a food product above a threshold level should be labelled. However, as there was concern about the possible price rise after the introduction of a mandatory labelling system, a regulatory impact assessment (RIA) on the labelling of GM food in Hong Kong was conducted and revealed that there would be additional cost to the trade, in particular the small and medium sized companies, if a mandatory scheme was to be implemented. Moreover, there is at present no international consensus on the labelling of GM food. The Government will need to engage the trade and other stakeholders and consult them before coming to any conclusion on whether there should be mandatory labelling requirement for GM food. In response to consumers' increasing demand for more product information, the Government considers it a pragmatic move to introduce a voluntary labelling scheme for GM food at this stage.

The Codex Alimentarius Commission (Codex) considers that governments of different places may make their own decisions on whether or not to label GM food, and emphasises that labelling arrangements should be in conformity with the provisions promulgated by the Codex to avoid potential trade issues. At present, the regulatory approach on GM food labelling varies in different countries and areas, and can be broadly classified as voluntary or mandatory. For the voluntary labelling approach, only GM food that is significantly different from its conventional counterpart, in terms of composition, nutritional value and allergenicity, needs to be labelled. Canada is adopting this approach. For the mandatory approach, it can be further classified as two categories, i.e. "pan-labelling" or "labelling for designated products only". The "pan-labelling" category requires that any food products containing GM materials exceeding a threshold level or food with any significantly different characteristics as a result of genetic modification must be labelled. The U.S., EU, Australia and New Zealand are examples of countries adopting this approach. The "labelling for designated products only" category requires that only the designated products which are genetically modified need to be labelled. Countries like Mainland China and Japan are adopting this approach.

Adopting a threshold level of 5%:

Pros

• At present, there is no international consensus on threshold level for GM food labelling and the adopted threshold levels vary from country to country with levels ranged from 0.9 to 5%. Hence, a threshold level of 5% would impose less technical difficulties on the trade.
• This approach will incur less additional cost on the food production.
• This approach will currently be more practical or achievable among the local food trade.

Cons

• This approach will not fully address the need of consumers who would like to know the presence of a lower content of GM materials, so as to make informed choices.

Adopting a threshold level of 1%:

Pros

• This approach will address better the need of consumers who would like to know whether food contains any GM materials at all, so as to make informed choices.

Cons

• This approach will currently be less practical or achievable among the local food trade.
• This approach will limit consumer choice to those foods that have been grown intentionally to meet the non-GM market due to the problem of unintentional adventitious mixing between GM and non-GM food materials in the production of field crops.

To be consistent with the international approach, negative labelling is not recommended for food of which no GM varieties have been produced as it would be misleading to consumers. The trade could browse the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) GM Foods Platform to know more about which foods have GM counterparts. Furthermore, absolute terms such as "GM free" and similar labels (e.g. GMO free, free from GM ingredients, etc.) are not recommended to be used, as such absolute terms may be misleading to consumers. Since there is the possibility of unintentional mixing of GM and non-GM crops, a truly "GM free" status is very difficult to attain.

If the trade would like to use labelling besides the aforesaid absolute terms to describe their products as being made from non-GM source, they need to have documentation to substantiate such declaration. Moreover, if a product contains multiple ingredients, such declaration can only be used when ALL of the ingredients in the product are derived from non-GM sources and documentation are available to substantiate the claim.

Schedule 4 of the Food and Drugs (Composition and Labelling) Regulations exempts any food consisting of a single ingredient to comply with the labelling requirements imposed under paragraph 2 of Schedule 3 to the Regulations. However, paragraph 3 of Schedule 3 provides that if any prepackaged food which is exempted from paragraph 2 of Schedule 3 is marked or labelled with a list of ingredients on its own initiative (regardless whether the ingredients are GM or not), such list of ingredients shall comply with the labelling requirements imposed under Schedule 3.

Therefore, if traders adopt this voluntary guidelines on GM food labeling, food with single ingredient consisting of 5% or more GM materials is to be labelled as "genetically modified" in parenthesis following the name of the food in the list of ingredients or in a prominently displayed footnote to the list of ingredients. Such labelling should conform in all respects with the requirements of the marking and labelling of prepackaged foods in the said Schedule 3.