| - Most supermarkets, such as Waitrose, Marks & Spencer, Safeway and Sainsbury's, have a strict policy to avoid all GM ingredients, including the oils, starches and sugars that don't yet have to be labelled - and they are well on the way to ensuring that their meat, eggs and dairy products come from animals fed a non-GM diet.
- The Government has admitted that contamination from genetically-modified crops could wipe out all 4,000 of Britain's organic farms as well as the UK organic manufacturing and export sector.
WHY GM CROPS MUST NEVER BE PLANTED HERE
Robert Vint
Western Morning News
09:00 - 21 April 2003
As the British Government prepares for a public debate on the commercialisation of GM crops, Totnes-based director of Genetic Food Alert ROBERT VINT
The Government has admitted that contamination from genetically-modified crops could wipe out all 4,000 of Britain's organic farms as well as the UK organic manufacturing and export sector.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. GM contamination threatens the whole UK food and farming industry, not just the flourishing organic sector.
In response to consistent and clear consumer demand virtually all food producers in the UK have phased out GM ingredients over the last three years.
Several imported GM ingredients, such as maize (corn) and soya are already legal in the UK and have had to be labelled since 1999. Even if there was 1 per cent GM contamination of an ingredient it would have to be labelled.
But look on all the ingredient labels in your local supermarket and you will have great trouble finding anything labelled "genetically modified" because nearly all manufacturers have now removed GM ingredients to maintain sales.
Most supermarkets, such as Waitrose, Marks & Spencer, Safeway and Sainsbury's, have a strict policy to avoid all GM ingredients, including the oils, starches and sugars that don't yet have to be labelled - and they are well on the way to ensuring that their meat, eggs and dairy products come from animals fed a non-GM diet.
The UK honey trade ensures that all honey comes from hives at least six miles from a GM test crop and the UK wholefood trade, for which I work, maintains a strict "no GM" policy in its 1,500 shops. UK food manufacturers who sell to other EU countries also have to have a strict non-GM policy because of consumer demand across Europe.
GM contamination of imported ingredients has been a problem for a few years but it is still fairly easy to manage. But once GM crops are grown in the UK, contamination becomes a nightmare that can occur at every point in the food chain from field to fork.
Contamination can spread by wind, bees and farm machinery. Non-GM farmers can be contaminated by pollen from neighbouring GM farms - making their crop unsaleable or greatly reducing its sale price. Contamination of products can occur in the trucks that transport crops, in grain silos, on conveyor belts, in factories and in warehouses. At every point, costly precautions will have to be taken to avoid contamination.
Virtually every farmer and food producer in the UK will be hit financially in three ways.
First, they will have to pay to prevent GM contamination through land segregation, GM testing and machinery and vehicle cleaning.
Second, they will incur costs when contamination does occur - through lost sales and the need to dump contaminated crops and withdraw contaminated products from supermarket shelves.
Finally, by far the greatest cost may be the long-term negative publicity that will result from their buyers and customers knowing that their products have been contaminated. In short, this means that more farmers and manufacturers will lose their jobs, UK food exports will fall and food prices in the shops will increase.
There are no meaningful Government or EU plans to prevent this inevitable contamination. The EU proposals to allow "co-existence" of GM and non-GM crops and to prevent cross-contamination are farcical in the extreme. EU Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler recently proposed a "voluntary arrangement" whereby GM farmers, if they wish, can inform their neighbouring farmers that they are growing a GM crop. In other words, he suggests that there should be no regulation at all.
For some sectors there will be no hope. Not only will organic businesses close, but beekeepers will lose their jobs because they will not be able to stop their bees from collecting pollen from GM farms up to six miles from their hives. Wholesalers and retailers will switch to buying honey from other countries. As bees are essential for pollinating many crops, as well as orchards, the decline of UK beekeeping could help reduce agricultural yields across the country.
Those businesses that can survive will be exposed to great financial risks. Normally the victims of pollution are entitled to compensation - the Government calls this the "Polluter Pays Principle" - but the Government has decided that in the case of GM contamination the polluters will not be liable and that there will be no compensation.
When businesses face such financial risks they generally buy insurance policies, but the insurance industry is refusing to provide such cover because the financial risks are "inestimable". In fact, the insurance industry refuses to get involved in only two areas - GM food and crops and also nuclear energy and radioactive waste - because there is no proper information on the health and financial risks involved in either.
This brings me, finally, to another group of people who will be exposed to risk - and that is you, the consumer of Britain's food. There is, remarkably, no independent, published scientific research into the long-term effects of GM foods that you or I or any independent expert can go and have a look at. I have spent months trying to find such published research by asking all the Government and industry experts.
After telling me that there were piles of such research, they failed to refer me to what I wanted.
The British Medical Association, Royal Society of Canada, Consumers International and other organisations have likewise complained about the absence of this information. Faced with risks and a total lack of legal and financial protection, there is only one option left for Britain's farmers, food manufacturers and consumers - and that is to make absolutely sure that GM crops are never planted in the UK.
Source: GMWatch
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