In response to sustained negative European response, foods giant Unilever UK has decided to phase out genetically engineered foods, a move that was closely followed by a similar announcement by Nestle UK.
Unilever sells over 1,000 brands of foods through 300 subsidiaries in 88 countries, and Nestle, with 495 factories, is the world’s largest food production company. Nestle UK production facilities manufacture for the entire European market.
Over the past month’s, a number of large supermarket chains including the UK’s Iceland Stores and Marks and Spencer banned all GM ingredients from their private label products.
Prince Charles commented, “I suspect that planting herbicide resistant crops will lead to more chemicals being used on our fields, not fewer. But this isn’t the whole story. Such sterile fields will offer little or no food or shelter to wildlife, and there is already evidence that the genes for herbicide resistance can spread to wild relatives of crop plants, leaving us with weeds resistant to weedkiller.”
UK law requires GM seed firms notify the public prior to planting. The first farm to take part in the UK government’s farm scale trials of GM crops may be forced to plough up seed because the company did not inform the public of its plans.
Monsanto, in response to the intense pressure, has stopped marketing Terminator seeds (sterile seeds) until studies examining their environmental, economic and social effects are completed.
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