Ten state and national health ministers will meet in Wellington, New Zealand, in late July and are expected to agree on labelling standards after two years of discussions.

"Once a decision is made...there is a lead time to allow products on the shelves to be used up before the new requirements become mandatory," said Peter Leihne, general manager standards of the Australia New Zealand Food Authority (ANZFA)."We would expect about a 12-month period," he told a news conference, when asked when labelled products would appear. So far Australia's only GM crop of commercial significance is cotton with trials of canola, clover, field peas, wheat, barley, sugarcane and lupins under way.But processed foods containing GM commodities such as soybeans, corn, canola, cotton seed oil, sugar beet and potatoes have been on sale in Australia for about10 years without labels, prompting concern as GM awareness has grown in recent years.

Latest polls show 68 per cent of Australians would avoid GM foods if given the choice and up to 90 per cent want labelling.ANZFA chairman Michael MacKellar said seven safety assessment tests over the past year on food involving GM commodities had failed to find any evidence of health risk.

These included five reports released on Monday for public comment on foods involving GM corn, cotton, canola and soybeans - which could vary from icecream to sausages. A further 12 safety assessment reports will be released in coming months.

"All the scientific data presently before ANZFA indicates that the GM foods under assessment have all the benefits of the corresponding conventional foods and no additional risks," MacKellar said as he launched the latest reports.

But anti-GM campaigners argued these tests were "too little and too late" as products containing genetically engineered crops had been sold in Australia for yearsand were still on the shelves without labelling to alert consumers.

"It will be July 2001 before there is any labelling," Bob Phelps, director of the Australian Conservation Foundation GeneEthnics Network, told reporters."The ANZFA is not taking a sufficiently precautionary approach...we think industry should now begin labelling genetically engineered products without government requirements." Australia's Parliamentary Health Secretary, Senator Grant Tambling, expected a final decision on labelling to be made on July 28 by the states, which retain food regulation powers. Even though the federal government does not have the final say on this issue, Prime Minister John Howard has written to all state premiers urging a softening in mandatory labelling of genetically modified foods.

In a telephone conference on Friday, the ministers were believed to have reached a consensus on Howard's compromise, agreeing to exempt GM products with highly refined ingredients, those used as processing aids and those preparedat point of sale. But they are believed to have refused to agree to the key request, that other foods with less than one per cent of GM content be exempt from labelling.

Tambling on Monday defended Howard's intervention. "It is a matter of recognising that there are a lot of issues that are not just health related but must be picked up in different impacts, such as the impact on the dairy industry and on the sugar industry," Tambling told the news conference.

-- (Reuters)