Inter Press Service | November 25, 1999 | By Danielle Knight
WASHINGTON - U.S. environmental and consumer groups, following the lead of European critics of biotechnology, are pressuring one of the nation's largest supermarket chains to remove all genetically engineered products from its shelves.
"Consumers are being used as guinea pigs and are being denied the right to make informed choices about the food they eat and feed their families," said Brent Blackwelder, president of Friends of the Earth.
Dressed up to look like genetically modified produce such as tomatoes, dozens protestors rallied yesterday outside one of the biggest Safeway supermarkets in the nation's capital.
They were joined by Jose Bove - the French farmer in the forefront of the European fight against genetically modified foods - who told the crowd that the new technology posed unknown health and environmental risks.
"We need to use civil disobedience to win the struggle against biotechnology," said Bove.
Protestors want Safeway and other U.S. supermarkets to ban the modified products from their stores - as did the French chain Carrefour and Sainsbury's in Britain after the protests in Europe.
"Because (genetically modified products) have not been proven safe, they do not belong on supermarket shelves," said Marnie Glickman of the Organic Consumers Association.
Despite the widespread use of genetically modified products in the United States, critics warn that federal regulatory agencies do not test the new technology for long-term health and environmental impacts.
"The Food and Drug Administration has failed to protect consumers," said Glickman. "Consumers are mad and they ought to be mad; they have been sold down the river by their own government."
Concern over the new technology also has grown in Congress where earlier this month 20 Representatives introduced a bill that would require labeling of all modified products.
Protestors said the biologically engineered food products could cause allergies in some people who are sensitive to a type a food whose genes have been added to another crop.
They said biotechnology also resulted in other unintended environmental risks, including the cross pollination of gen-tech crops with wild plants, causing pesticide resistance and the growth of so-called "super-weeds."
Protestors pointed to unforeseen reports such as the Cornell University study that concluded pollen from genetically modified Bt corn was toxic to Monarch butterfly larvae.
Responding to consumer concerns over biotechnology, Safeway pointed out that it did stock organic food, produced without any genetically modified products.
While Friends of the Earth applauded this effort, Francois Dufour with Confederation Paysanne, the French organization opposing gen-tech food said this was not enough.
"We want everyone to have safe food," said Dufour.
Friends of the Earth, warning consumers as they buy food for the national Thanksgiving holiday today, said genetically engineered ingredients, such as modified corn and soybeans, are present in approximately 60-70 percent of all processed foods lining U.S. supermarket shelves.
In front of the Safeway, protestors handed out a list called the "Frankenfood 15" of food companies that have not officially proclaimed their products free of genetically engineered ingredients. The list included Nestle, Hershey's, Coca-Cola, Nabisco, McDonald's and General Mills.
Future protests were planned at a Safeway store in Seattle, Washington, during the international World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations beginning next week.
U.S. consumer and environmental organizations worried that, during the trade talks, the United States and other agricultural exporting countries which had invested in the technology would push biologically engineered food products on other countries without their consent.
In a letter sent last week, the groups urged U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky and members of the U.S. delegation to the WTO meeting, to remove biotechnology from the agenda at the upcoming talks.
"The U.S. proposal ... may undermine the ability of governments to address the serious ethical, health and environmental challenges posed by biotechnology," said Friends of the Earth, Consumer's Choice Council, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and others.
They said bringing up biotechnology at the WTO meeting threatens to undermine the Biosafety Protocol, an international agreement currently being negotiated to address the possible risks of the new technology.
Organizations worldwide have criticized the trade body for dismantling domestic health and environmental laws, said the letter. By bringing biotechnology issues into the domain of the WTO, the Geneva-based institution's legitimacy will be questioned even further, they said.
"Introducing biotechnology threatens to further politicize the upcoming WTO ministerial meeting, as well as the role of the U.S. government in international trade negotiations," said the groups.
