Australia and New Zealand at War Over Folic Acid

There’s a trans-Tasman fight brewing, and it’s all over a humble loaf of bread.

A joint NZ-Australian ministerial council agreed in  mid-2007 to mandatorily fortify all bread with folic acid, which can cut the rates of neural tube defect, such as spina bifida. The  change was scheduled to take effect in both countries in two months.

But since then, governments in both NZ and Australia have changed hands — and NZ doesn’t want to come to the party anymore.

While the overarching food regulator, Food Standards Australia New Zealand, says mandatory fortification will prevent birth defects, critics say only a handful of such birth defects will be prevented each year, providing little justification for medicating a dietary staple consumed by most people in both countries.
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The critics camp has been boosted by new studies from the US which have linked excessive folate in the human diet to higher rates of prostate cancer in men and inflammatory bowel disease in children. The findings have so concerned the British and Irish governments that they have put a hold on the introduction of their own mandatory fortification programs, and NZ wants to do the same. Yet it is tied to the joint agreement signed two years earlier.

An survey carried out by the Key Government found that 87 per cent of New Zealanders did not want their bread fortified with artificial folate.

The ministerial council will be meeting again to discuss the issue in October, one month after the mandatory fortification is supposed to take affect. Will NZ defy the new rules? Do we want our bread fortified with folate?

Time to arm ourselves with baguette sticks and fight it out!

[Source]