Posted on 28-7-2003

British Food Retailers Say No To GE
24.07.2003, by Brian Fallow

Consumer resistance to genetically modified foods in key export markets
means it would be ruinous folly for New Zealand to abandon its status as a
GM-free food producer, says the Sustainability Council. And most New
Zealanders agree, it says, citing a Colmar Brunton poll in which 80 per
cent of respondents said the country should remain a GM-free food producer
at least until our export markets accepted GM food.

The Government is committed to lifting the GM moratorium in October. But
the Sustainability Council is calling for it to maintain a ban on
commercial GM food production for the next five years. The council's chief
executive, Simon Terry, said that would still allow research on food crops,
including field trials under strict conditions, to continue. Medical
applications of genetic engineering would be completely unaffected.

The British Government, which is also debating whether to lift a moratorium
on planting GM crops, has been told by supermarket chains that GM food is
not commercially viable in Britain. The British Retail Consortium, whose
members represent 90 per cent of the UK food retailing market, said
supermarkets' customers were telling them they did not want to buy products
containing GM ingredients. The consortium's food policy director Richard
Ali said the retailers would not be using GM ingredients in their own
brands. Farmers could grow what they liked, regulators could impose what
labelling requirements they liked, food manufacturers could include what
ingredients they liked. "But if our members stock products people don't
want to buy, at the end of the day they go out of business. We have made
that point very clearly to the Government," Ali said. It is a question how
far back in the food chain the GM aversion extends. European labelling
requirements, for example, do not extend to meat from animals reared on GM
feed.

But Terry said food manufacturer HJ Heinz has a global policy of no GM
products in the food chain and some British supermarket chains make a point
of guaranteeing their meat is from stock that has not been fed GM fodder.
The Sustainability Council dismisses the idea that GM and non-GM production
could co-exist without the latter suffering trace contamination.
Sensitivity to contamination was highlighted recently, it says, when
routine testing by a Japanese pizza maker revealed 0.05 per cent GM
contamination in corn supplied from New Zealand. It argues that this makes
allowing commercial GM crops an irreversible, all-or-nothing decision.
"There's no going back so why take the enormous economic risk when we
don't need to?" said council chairman Sir Peter Elworthy. "The rest of the
work going on in trees and vaccines and other areas can still proceed after
the moratorium is lifted without harming our food chain."

The council says New Zealand cereal growers see little advantage in present
GM varieties designed for North American conditions. "The 22 per cent of
farmers who say they want to use GM are generally looking for new types of
seeds. It will be five to 10 years before these GM seed varieties will be
available - seeds that could offer more than just alternative ways of
dealing with pests and diseases."