New Euro Rules Won't Put GM Foods on Store Shelves
Date: 04-Jul-03
Country: UK
Author: Sharman Esarey
Many European consumers want no part of what they see as the high-tech scientific wizardry of gene manipulation designed to boost yields and cut the use of pesticides. Food suppliers say they will deliver what consumers want. So rules, shmules?
"Regardless of labeling, we'll stock what people want to buy," said a spokesman for U.S. based Wal-Mart's UK unit ASDA.
European consumers are still turning up their noses at the fare famously decried as "Frankenfood" for fear of health or environmental harm, and many feel the new labels would simply offer them an opportunity to refuse products they disdain.
"In Europe there is a clear trend among consumers that they want to avoid the products with GMO labels, so there is clear pressure on producers to make sure they have no GMO and that they will not have the label," said an official with Dutch-based Ahold, the world's third largest food retailer.
The laws passed on Wednesday, which also stipulate the segregation of GM from conventional crops, require the labeling of any foods that contain more than 0.9 percent of genetically modified ingredients. Labels could hit store shelves in 2004.
European wariness has infuriated major producers the United States, which has seen sales to the lucrative market plummet.
The United States has taken the EU to the World Trade Organization over its five-year de facto ban on new GM crop varieties. On Wednesday, the United States said the laws were "confusing for the consumer." Canada said the WTO action it backed would continue.
Swiss food giant Nestle said it does not sell genetically modified products into countries where customers are opposed to GMOs and the ruling was unlikely to change this.
"We are not trying to force consumers to accept products that they don't want. We sell products containing GMOs in countries where they accept them and we don't sell products with GMO where a consumer does not want to buy them. It is as simple as that," said Nestle spokesman Marcel Rubin.
A spokeswoman for French food group Danone, maker of biscuits, yogurts and mineral waters, said: "We follow the regulations and the wishes of the consumer."
Some stores already stock minor lines in GM food.
Ahold's main store group, Albert Heijn in the Netherlands, stocks some 10 products with GM ingredients out of a lineup of several thousand. They are largely in the snack food area.
Similarly, Metro, Germany's biggest retailer and the world's fifth largest, said its group stocks a handful of GM-labeled products out of its total of more than one million.
"It's absolutely the right direction for customers who will now get clear signals of whether products are genetically modified or not," a Metro spokesman said.
(Additional reporting by Elaine Hardcastle in London, Jon Cox in Zurich, Marcel Michelson in Amsterdam, Caroline Brothers in Paris and Paul Hoskins in Frankfurt)
