WASHINGTON -- A committee formed by the United States and the European Union was cited as recommending tighter controls Monday on genetically engineered foods, including mandatory labeling of products with biotech ingredients.

The 20-member panel, which included scientists, farmers, consumer advocates and industry officials was quoted as saying, "Consumers should have the right of informed choice regarding the selection of what they want to consume."

The 19-page report said the United States and Europe should set "content-based mandatory labeling requirements" for foods that contain "novel genetic material," a term Europeans use for genetically engineered ingredients.

The United States currently does not require the labeling of products with gene-altered ingredients, based on the premise that they are essentially the same as conventionally bred crops, but, the story says, some panel members believe the report's language is vague enough to support the U.S. position. Agricultural biotechnology "holds the potential to provide new tools for farmers in developing countries to increase yields, produce crops resistant to drought, salinity, pests and diseases, and produce new crop products of greater nutritional value," said the panel's report.

But it also said that new biotech products should not be allowed on the market until they have gone through a mandatory government approval process. Panel member Carol Tucker Foreman, director of the Consumer Federation of America's Food Policy Institute was quoted as saying the report "basically says that what we are doing right now is not enough."

Under the report's recommendation, any foods with detectable traces of genetically engineered crops should be labeled, she said.

But another panel member, Missouri farmer Ryland Utlaut, was cited as saying the report could be read to support existing U.S. policy on labeling, adding, "If we're not changing the content of the food or putting anything new in it, it is saying that we do not have to label."

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