Greenpeace cheers Paul McCartney's GM free announcement
Klaus Merkle
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For Immediate Release:
Thursday 10th June 1999
Greenpeace cheers Paul McCartney's GM free announcement
Greenpeace today welcomes ex-Beatle Paul McCartney's statement that the
Linda McCartney Foods range is now entirely free of genetically engineered
products.
Greenpeace has been involved in advising Linda McCartney Foods over the
past few months on how to source GM free ingredients and the wider
issues concerning GM contamination of food products.
"Paul McCartney said he would 'sort it' in going totally GM free and he
has. He now leads the way in showing other food producers that it is
possible to go entirely GM free," said Greenpeace UK campaign director
John Sauven after he met with McCartney today.
Note to editors:
Linda McCartney Foods is the leading vegetarian food producer in the
United Kingdom and a subsidiary of McVities (United Biscuits), one of the
largest food producers in the UK, which has also committed itself to source GM
free products. Paul Mc Cartney took over the responsibility for the company
after the death of his wife Linda.
Charles Rader
solution to the controversy about labelling food that is
genetically modified -- namely, label food that is not
genetically modified. That is what has been done in similar
instances in the past.
Example: Before there was any genetically modified food,
there was food grown using insecticides and chemical
fertilizers. Experts and government agencies told us that
this food was perfectly safe but lots of people believed and
still believe that it is dangerous to human health. So an
industry grew up to supply these people with ``organic''
food. The organic label is widely understood to mean that
food so labelled has been grown without using chemical
fertilizers or insecticides. In my experience it is usually
more expensive, either because it costs farmers more to grow
it, or because some people are willing to pay premium prices
for certified organic food. In any case, the precedent here
is that when experts and government agencies decide that
food is safe to eat, it is sold without any special label,
but people who want labelling for some special
characteristic of their food willingly bear the extra cost.
Here is another example. Religeous orthodox Jews care about
how food is processed. The believe that they should only eat
meat from animals who have been slaughtered according to an
established ritual. The believe that meat and milk should
never be used together. These and other practices are
summarized in a part of the Jewish tradition called Kosher
law. Food which complies with the Kosher law can be labelled
with a special symbol, widely recognized, consisting of a C
in a circle. To the nest of my knowledge, no Jews are
demanding that everyone else's food has to be labelled if it
is not ``Kosher''. In many cases Kosher food is more
expensive than non-Kosher food even though it seldom costs
more to produce. The certification entails some cost. At the
minimum, a rabbi who checks that the food has been processed
properly needs to be paid for his services. So once again,
the people who want the label bear the cost of the label and
they do not impose that cost on anyone else. No government,
even in Israel, thinks that non-Kosher food is unsafe to
eat. No government, even in Israel, requires a label for
non-Kosher food.
Can anyone explain to me why we need to reverse the
precedent for labelling foods containing genetically
modified crop ingredients?
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