Transition Island Blog

The Irish and Polish Governments have both decided to prohibit the use of GMOs across the entire country.

Ireland won’t go so far as to ban GM animal feed, it is advising farmers to reject it “voluntarily”. Poland has gone the further step, by banning the whole lot, feed included.

GMO distrust

At a time when public demand for organic food has never been higher, there is still deep distrust of GM - reflected by the fact that M&S now guarantees all its eggs, milk and meat is produced without GM feeds, as do Sainsbury’s and Morrison’s on their frozen chickens and turkeys.

It’s still confusing though. A free-range label does not mean GM free and most imported meat and dairy products will contain it by default unless they are organic.

Greenpeace petition

Last February, Greenpeace delivered a petition to Markos Kyprianou, European Commissioner for Health. The petition calls for milk, meat, eggs and other animal products to be labelled when the animals have been fed with genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

Greenpeace collected the million citizens’ signatures in 21 EU member states between May 2005 and December 2006. Consumer groups and other environmental organisations helped. Ordinary people from Ireland to Poland and Finland to Greece have demanded the right to know whether the food they buy is produced using GMOs.

The statement on the petition says: “We demand mandatory labelling of animal products based on GMOs because of citizens’ right to information, a fundamental right in the European Union.” According to a number of surveys, most consumers would choose not to eat GM-fed animal products.

gmo loophole

A vast loophole in EU law exempts animal products from labelling requirements: foods like cooking oil, ketchup and cake mix have to be labelled if the ingredients include 0.9% GMOs or more, and animal feed packets must be similarly labelled. But food products derived from animals fed with GMOs - meat, milk, eggs - do not need to be labelled at all.

Over 90% of GM crops imported into the EU are soya and maize destined for animal feed. The diet of farm animals in Europe is typically composed of up to 30% GMOs. This amounts to 20 million tonnes of GMOs entering the EU food chain each year without consumers being told.

“Under the present law, consumers have no option but to eat food produced using GMOs,” said Marco Contiero. “Taking GMOs out of the animal food chain in Europe will help protect the environment from the uncontrolled release of GM crops, which threaten health and biodiversity.”

research funds

Our Government provides around £50m a year for GM research. It spends £1.6 m on research into organic farming.

Anything labelled organic must meet the minimum of EU standards; and Soil Association certified produce has even more rigorous standards.

Peter Melchett, policy director for the Soil Association says of research “We might not be progressing as fast as some people would like, but we have come a long way,” he says. “If consumers buy locally grown, seasonal, organic food they will be doing just about as much good as anyone can for themselves and the environment.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 20th, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under Eco-News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.