The theory and practice of European traceability regulations for genetically modified food and feed

Traceability of GMO food and feed is a growing request among the European populations and the European Community has responded by providing a complex set of EC Regulations on GMO traceability, detection and labelling, to ensure that the general public is able to make an informed choice about the food they eat. Despite the efficiency and sensitivity of modern GMO detection methods, the regulations do not cover all possible contingencies, so that numerous ambiguities and difficulties of interpretation still exist. However, documentary traceability has been made mandatory to e.g. cover food and feed matrices without analytes and mostly to participate to the reduction of controls' costs by focusing them on raw, more easily analyzable, material. The analytical situation is further complicated by the increasing variety of new GMO crops that appear on the world market, by the fact that, due to the unofficial EC moratorium on GMO approvals since 1999, relatively few GMO crops are presently authorized in Europe, and by the accidental presence of unauthorized GMOs in Europe. The purpose of this review is to analyse, and propose solutions for some of these difficulties.