Original scientific paper
Monitoring the Presence of Genetically Modified Food on the Market of the Republic of Croatia
Albert Cattunar
Krunoslav Capak
Jelena Žafran Novak
Vladimir Mićović
Jagoda Doko-Jelinić
Đulija Malatestinić
Abstract
From the beginning of the human race people have been applying different methods to change the genetic material of
either plants or animals in order to increase their yield as well as to improve the quality and quantity of food. Genetically
modified organism (GMO) means an organism in which the genetic material has been altered in a way that does not occur
naturally by mating and/or natural recombination. Analysing the presence of GMO in food is done by detecting the
presence of either specific DNA sequences inserted in the genome of transgenic organism, or detecting proteins as a result
of the expression of the inserted DNA. In this work food testing for the presence of genetically modified organisms was
conducted during the period from 2004 to 2007 in the GMO laboratory of the Croatian National Institute of Public
Health. According to the regulations, among the samples in which the presence of GMO was detected, all those which
had more than 0.9% of GMO content were either rejected from the border or removed from the market, because such GM
food has to be appropriately labelled. Among the food samples which were analysed in 2004: 127 (2.37%) of a total of
1226 samples contained more than 0.9% of GMOs; in 2005 there was only one in 512 (0.20%) samples in total; in 2006
there were 4 out of 404 samples (0.99%), and in 2007: 7 of a total of 655 samples (1.07%) had GMO content above the allowed
threshold of 0.9%.
Keywords
genetically modified food; health; market; monitoring; Croatia
Hrčak ID:
75646
URI
Publication date:
30.12.2011.
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