GM foods have seen a fair bit of debate amongst the Muslim community in Indonesia in the past few years, with quite a few consumers convinced that these are unnatural or harmful products due to claims circulating on the internet.
“Many people in Indonesia do not understand GM products due to a lot of hoaxes and false information circulating on the internet,” Gadjah Madah University researcher Nanung Danar Dono told the floor at a halal forum focused on regulations for GM foods in Indonesia.
“Some of these rumours include GM foods being harmful, unsafe for consumption and also haram (not halal) so not consumable by Muslim consumers.
“This has escalated to a stage of obviously prejudiced claims such as consumption leading to serious illness, e.g. eating seedless fruits will cause infertility or that tempeh made from GM soybeans will cause cancer – all of which have no scientific evidence behind them.
“GM modifications do not generally use pig DNA so there is no cause for the claim that all GM foods are haram – and in fact, Indonesia’s top Islamic scholars body, the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) has already stated that GM foods can have modifications that make the foods more beneficial and sustainable, and as long as the origin gene and animal are halal there are no real issues.”
This was seconded by Head of the Indonesia Biosafety Committee for Genetically Engineered Product Prof Dr Bambang Prasetya, who highlighted GM foods as an important path forward to ensure food security in the country.
“There are currently many challenges that face the food supply chain in many countries which means that the risks facing food security are high as well,” he told the floor.
“Indonesia is no different – our food security index in 2023 was 50.9, which showed a significant drop from the 2018 score of 58.2, and has been dropping year to year.
“As such, we need to improve the food supply and this means both increasing yield as well as increasing quality of the food in the system, both of which can be done with GM technologies.
“At the moment Indonesia is about 20 years behind on this front, in a sector and technology which can not only provide food security but also stability and safety to our crops, so much more needs to be done.”
No point in denial
Prof Dr Bambang also highlighted that GM foods are already present in the majority of food imports into Indonesia even if not yet being used in agriculture, so there is no denying its influence on the local food supply.
“About 90% of food imports into Indonesia have some form of GM ingredients, so people can say they have never eaten anything GM before, but they are actually already eating this whether they know it or not,” he said.
“A good example is chicken – as long as you have eaten chicken or eggs, you have definitely consumed GM content.”
Dono added that Indonesia still has a long way to go to catch up, but stressed that this is a necessary process.
“What is really important at this point for Indonesia’s food supply is to clarify any hoaxes and explain the safety of GM foods to more consumers, as well as to ensure that the processing of all of these are halal,” he said.
“This falls to both the industry as well as religious scholars to do in order to stop the further spread of any fake information – and of course consumers need to do the right thing as well once the awareness is there.”