Consumers won't buy it.
Retailers won't sell it. Food producers won't
inlcude it. What part of NO don't they understand?
03/02/2005 — What do the major European food
retailers and producers think about genetically
engineered (GE) food? In a new Greenpeace
report, we asked them. Of the 60 top companies
we contacted, 49 of them won't use GE in their
own brands, and they've gone on record saying
so.
The EU market is worth over 1 thousand billion
Euros in annual food and drink sales. It is
effectively closed to GE-labelled ingredients
according to policies of leading retailers
and food producers, as revealed in the Greenpeace
EU Markets Report, published today.
49 of the 60 top companies contacted have
a non-GE policy in their own brands either
throughout the EU or at least in the market
where they make the majority of their sales.
A further 8 companies gave a non-GE commitment
in a number of countries but not yet in all
of their EU markets. Two companies never responded
and one company, the Dutch Royal Ahold (Albert
Heijn), uses GE ingredients in 3 to 5 of its
own brand products but noted that this number
is declining. A significant number of companies
stated that their policy applied globally
or company wide.
New European legislation requiring the labelling
and traceability of GE products came into
force in April 2004.
Since that time, our volunteers and cyberactivists
have been patrolling supermarkets as "Gene
Detectives."
hese activists monitor the shelves and report
GE-labelled food by uploading pictures of
the products to an interactive map. To date,
very few products in a handful of countries
(The Netherlands, UK, Czech Republic, Slovakia,
and France) have been reported.
The wide-spread nature of the consumer and
company rejection of GE products has now been
sustained over many years in Europe.
This demonstrates that excluding GE ingredients
is possible in practise on a large scale.
Labelling polices are practical for other
countries such as Japan, Brazil, and the US,
where consumers have an equal right to know
what their food is made from, and ought to
be given the choice what to buy.
Double standards
The US food industry is resisting labelling
laws in the US and Canada because it claims
it is not possible and too expensive. But
the very same companies making these claims
have plants in the US making labelled GE products
for Europe and elsewhere and the same products
unlabelled for the US market. Obviously it's
not a case of impossible or expensive, more
a case of not wanting to. Imagine those companies
having to give US and Canadian consumers a
choice about GE food!
But the US government is on the side of the
US food industry and has taken a lawsuit to
the World Trade Organisation, accusing EU
legislation of setting up unfair trade barriers
to GE products. This study provides further
evidence that the lost exports have in fact
been caused by consumer and food industry
rejection in Europe, not EU policies.
The fact is: people don't want to buy it.
Stores don't want to sell it. And the GE multinationals
can't make us eat it.
