When will non-GMO school lunches be delivered? The Taipei City Department of Education will continue to make revisions
The Taipei City Government Department of Education published its "Draft School Lunch Meal Service Procedure" at the end of February this year, and before the election Taipei City Mayor Ko Wen-je also signed the "Keep GMO Crops Out of School Lunches" pledge, but the "School Lunch Goes Non-GMO" team found that this draft SOP did not include genetically modified ingredients in the Taipei City school lunch procurement regulations.
Huang Chia-lin, co-founder of School Lunch Goes Non-GMO, said that after reading the draft, she found that it did not mention how to gradually reduce the use of GMO ingredients or whether they should be labeled, and that a letter had already been sent to the Taipei City mayoral mailbox to raise the issue, the content of the letter has also been made public, and the public is welcome to copy it and send it to the mayoral mailbox, in the hope that the Taipei City Government will take this issue seriously and include GMO ingredient regulations in the revised draft as soon as possible.
Imports of non-GMO soybeans grew fivefold, showing increased demand for safe soybeans
When Ko Wen-je previously accepted an interview with Newsmarket, he mentioned that after signing the "Keep GMO Crops Out of School Lunches" pledge, the future could move in the non-GMO direction, but because Taipei City governance "has a hundred things waiting to be done," he also admitted that he did not yet have many concrete ideas.
Huang Chia-lin affirmed that Ko Wen-je was willing to sign the pledge in public, showing that the Taipei City Government is paying attention to this issue, and that regulating GMO foods is the current trend; according to statistics from the Customs Administration of the Ministry of Finance, from November to December last year, imports of non-GMO soybean (soy) powder and fine granules grew fivefold, showing that Taiwan's demand for non-GMO legumes has clearly increased. She hopes the Taipei City Department of Education will speed up and respond to residents' needs.
But getting non-GMO food completely out of schools is not something that can be done overnight. "Of course we have to go step by step," Huang Chia-lin said. When drafting the proposal, the Taipei City Government could coordinate with the Ministry of Health and Welfare Food and Drug Administration's draft labeling rules for prepackaged foods, food additives and unpackaged foods containing genetically modified food ingredients, which are set to take effect in stages in June, and implement them gradually.
Chen Shun-ho, chief secretary and spokesperson of the Taipei City Government Department of Education, responded that under the current Food and Drug Administration rules, the soybeans, corn and other GMO crops now in use are all qualified and may be sold, and the United States does not specifically ban GMO foods either; at this stage businesses are not yet required to note whether they use GMO foods when registering, and the central and local governments must first unify the rules before they can be implemented.
"But we still encourage schools to use non-GMO foods," said Hsu Yu-sheng, section chief of the Physical Education and Health Division of the Taipei City Government Department of Education. He said 65% of schools in Taipei City already use non-GMO ingredients, and he hopes more schools will join in the future.
At present the government still cannot require schools to ban GMO foods in nutritious lunches. Chen Shun-ho explained that because non-GMO ingredients are more expensive, if nutritious lunch fees are to be raised while certain items are also prohibited from using GMO ingredients, it still depends on the school staff and parents on each school lunch supply committee negotiating and reaching consensus before it can be carried out. "You can set rules, but you can't set them so that no one can afford to eat."
Hsu Yu-sheng added that in the future, if businesses use GMO foods, they will be required to have clear labeling so consumers know; this draft SOP has just been initially released, the public is welcome to keep offering opinions, and after discussion the Taipei City Government Department of Education will make rolling revisions.