By CATHERINE FIELD Herald correspondent
PARIS - Consumers in the world's biggest trading bloc have flexed their muscles for the first time - and biotechnology giants, food processors and supermarket chains are running for cover.
A revolt against genetically engineered food has unfurled across the 15 European Union states, prompting boycotts of products, tough laws on labelling and providing a spur for "green" farming.
Worries about food hygiene after Europe's mad-cow scandal have mingled with mistrust of foods engineered in a lab, crippling the hopes of Monsanto, Novartis and other biotech firms to market foods they contend are safe and beneficial.
On April 10, the anti-GE lobby scored its biggest win yet, with the introduction of the toughest food labelling law of any major market in the world. More than three years in the making and approved in the teeth of United States opposition, the EU-wide directive says that any ingredient that is more than 1 per cent genetically engineered must be identified as transgenic in the list of ingredients, as well as any modfied additives or aromas. The rule will apply particularly to cornflour and soybean flour, which are found in pre-cooked foods, cooked meats, soups and sauces, breakfast cereals, spreads, beer, cakes and biscuits.
Christoph Roemer at the German Consumer Defence Association in Berlin says the rules still do not go far enough. They do not force the producer to say what GE ingredients may have been included in early stages of processing - a steak may have come from a cow fed on GE feed, but the final product would not have to carry a GE label. The anti-GE campaign has caused Governments to restrict or postpone the experimental release of GE seeds into the environment. But the biotech lobby, too, has clout. On April 12, the EU Parliament defeated a proposal that would have held biotech companies criminally liable for any ill effects on the environment that could result from their products, such as pollination of other species caused by bees or the wind. The fear: Europe may lose out on the gene revolution if constraints are too tight.
In France, a campaign by small farmers, led by left-wing activist Jose Bove, has snowballed into an anxious debate about "le mal bouffe" (bad grub), prompting scores of food companies to proudly exclude GE ingredients from their recipes.
Several British supermarket chains have stopped selling any products with transgenic ingredients. Marks and Spencer has issued a guarantee that its meat comes from animals that have not had GE ingredients in their feed. The cost of non-GE feed is 10-15 per cent higher than standard feed.
In Germany, the nearly three dozen products with GE ingredients disappeared off shop shelves last year under public pressure, and supermarket chains representing 75 per cent of the country's retail food outlets have foresworn never to use the substances in their own-brand recipes.
The anti-GE campaign is now having its effect on producers in the United States and Canada, who are seeing the lucrative European market shrink dramatically. US figures issued in March said that the hectareage of GE corn will fall from a third of the total this year to a quarter, and the share of GE soybean will fall from 57 per cent to 52 per cent.
Anti-GE campaign grows in strength
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