GM sugarcane

July 2017

Brazil has been a major supplier of non-GM soya to Europe. While huge tracts are planted with GM soya, the country has a very large land area and is confident it can keep GM and non-GM separate.

Last year, saw reductions in several GM-growing areas around the world: two countries (Romania and Burkino Faso) discontinued GM agriculture, India dropped GM cotton cultivation due to pest problems, one of China's biggest provinces implemented a 5-year ban on growing, processing and selling GM crops, Chinese GM cotton planting dropped 24%, while Argentina moved to crop diversification and away from GM. However, globally, the hectares planted to GM crops continue to edge upwards because the reductions have been offset by continuing increases in North and South America where 90% of GM plantings take place.

In Brazil there has been a rise in GM crop area, most of which will be soya, accompanied by reports of the deforestation of nearly 2 million acres of the Brazilian Amazon, the first in a decade.

This renewed environmental destruction may portend something more ominous than just more GM soya.

Regulators in Brazil have approved the commercial use of GM sugarcane.

NFU admits farmers must grow what consumers want

January 2017

Photo: Creative Commons

The Vice President of the National Farmers Union (NFU), who "thinks GM is the way forward" and that science, not "popular appeal", should be directing what farmers can and can't grow, has finally admitted he has to be "mindful of markets". He's noticed that he has to "grow what consumers want to eat" or what he grows won't sell.

Attendees at a meeting of United Oilseeds (co-operative specialist oilseeds merchant) were warned:

"If the UK takes a pro-GM attitude, where are our exports going to go? If we start to develop a different policy to the rest of the EU, those issues (product marketability) will raise their heads and we need to be very, very careful".

Add to this that there is a need for regulators "to recognise that agriculture is not just like any other industry" and that "some level of self sufficiency, some level of food security, is a political objective. Our home agriculture needs to thrive".

Proud to eat GM, or, non-GM

December 2016

Major food and feed-ingredient supplier, Bunge, is "excited" about its newest products.

These "new" offerings consist of verified non-GM corn ingredients and oils, plus ancient grains, rice, gluten-free breadings and puffed snacks. What's exciting is that Bunge is able to offer its major customers non-GM ingredients on a scale that allows them to grow their key non-GM brands with confidence.

What stimulated this exciting move was the market research suggesting:

"40 percent of consumers are actively managing (avoiding/minimising) consumption of GM foods in their daily diet". 

The market trend is towards clean labels, natural and minimally processed.

Cracks in GMO America

June 2016

Photo: Creative Commons

After over a decade of GM commodity crop growing, the first visible cracks began to appear in the carefully crafted American public's 'acceptance' of their novel diet.

Two years ago, it was clear that a deep scepticism towards the food industry and its use of technology had taken root.

US food trends going into 2016

February 2016

 

It became increasingly obvious during 2015 that eating habits across the USA are changing.

 

For today's Americans, all those processed, packaged offerings on the grocery shelves are conjuring up images of Michael Pollan's 'food-like substances' stripped of their nutrition, and loaded with chemicals and sugar. Consumers are demanding fresh, local, organic food.

 

After decades of foisting ever-cheaper, and ever-more-artificial fare on the public using deceptive marketing, corporate-sponsored research and government lobbying, food manufacturers are finding that their erstwhile customers are walking away from the country's most iconic food brands. Big brand names are fast becoming liabilities.

Natural food is simple

April 2015

Dr. Kellogg's corn flakes, patented in 1896, were probably the original, very simple, health food (even if no one would eat them until they were transformed into complex junk).

More recently, 'corn' has become associated with stuff that's definitely not in the healthy-choice section. For example: the number one staple junk food is corn syrup, then there's GM corn chock-full of its very own insecticide and specially accumulated weed-killer; and meat from intensively-reared livestock fast-fattened with GM corn to get them to market before their health buckles, washed down with milk from intensively reared dairy herds producing more milk than their bodies can handle (assisted by GM growth-hormone injections for good measure).

Milking (pardon the pun) the rising consumer concern about the cruelty involved in this routine extreme exploitation of cows to give them their daily pinta, scientists have invented Muufri (a worse pun).

GM crop decontamination in Oregon

August 2013

Sugar beet. CC photo by USDA on Flickr

Something's happening in the US State of Oregon that we, in Europe, have been led to believe Americans don't do. People are pulling up GM plants: 6,500 GM sugar-beets to be precise.

It's not too hard to understand why such anti-American behaviour should emerge in this particular State. The State has already had more than its fair share of awareness-raising events.

Earlier in 2013, another GM-impossible happened there: rogue GM wheat was found growing on an Oregon farm (see CONTAMINATION DÉJÀ VU - June 2013). Such genetic pollution by a GM plant not approved anywhere in the world could cost American farmers billions of dollars. Despite Department of Agriculture scouring of grain elevators, fields and research stations, the source of the contamination hasn't been found: it could happen again any time, anywhere.

Unsafe GM maize a trigger for food shortages?

October 2012 
 

The reaction of the pro-GM lobby to the long-term experiment which found evidence of harm from NK603 GM maize and its companion herbicide, had all the hallmarks of a full-scale panic (see UNSAFE GM MAIZE A TRIGGER FOR US LABELLING - October 2012).

The more savvy have identified the biotech industry itself as being behind the furore. Biotech finger-prints were all over the scientists who immediately jumped up and tore the study apart in their customary ungentlemanly and unscientific fashion. Not to mention the industry-funded Science Media Centre which rushed to feed all the correct 'science' to the media, most of whom dutifully repeated it. Add to these, who knows what lobbyists (including, it seems, members of the GM assessment panel itself) were primed to make sure the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) took the right pro-GM decisions. All this happened in record time as befits a pre-planned and orchestrated suppression of unwelcome news. Just what the biotech industry PR boys do best.

However, here's another interesting angle to the bigger picture. What are the chances the order to kill the offending science with all possible speed came directly from the Whitehouse? A hotline from the US administration to key parties in Europe?

If that sounds far-fetched, consider the position the USA has got itself into.

Roundup Ready beet legal saga

June 2011

Harvesting sugar beet
Photo from Flickr

The tortuous issue of GM sugar beet, transformed to resist Roundup herbicide, has come to its final conclusion.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has been ordered to prepare a full rigorous review of the environmental impacts of the GM beet before re-considering its future commercial use.

All planting of Monsanto's patented beet must stop and all GM beet planted since the initial ruling (now upheld) must be destroyed. As a regulated plant, GM beet is now illegal to grow commercially.

The dark side

February 2011

Refuting any suggestion that Mayan predictions claim the world will end in December 2012, one Mayan elder (a priest and spiritual guide) has a very different version of what the world is heading towards just now.

He tells us we are in a time of cosmic transition.

“As we pass through transition, there is a colossal, global convergence of environmental destruction, social chaos, war, and ongoing Earth Changes.” 

Considering the recent unprecedented droughts, floods, snow-storms, gales, tsunamis, fires, sub-zero temperatures, volcanic eruptions, political upheavals, financial crises, declining human fertility ... he may have a point.

Hershey's candy bars

... be very careful of any Hershey or Reese's candy bar. Here's why.

Hershey, maker of America's only home-spun chocolate, has been giving very mixed message on its use of GM ingredients.

In 2007, just when GM sugar-beet was heading towards US fields for the 2008 harvest, Hershey was urging farmers not to plant it. The indications were that the Company had noted consumer resistance and had announced it would not use GM sugar in its products.

Hershey has not traditionally been a big exporter to Europe. However, in 2009, Hershey's 'Nutrageous' and other peanut candy bars started to appear on most supermarket shelves.

Most of these were true American candy bars complete with GM ingredients. However, non-GM versions of Nutrageous were available in some outlets. The Company had, clearly, retained the capacity to produce non-GM candy. Why it chose to flood a GM-unfriendly market with GM candy isn't known, but the testing of the water in cahoots with UK supermarkets seems the most likely explanation.

Another question raised by the GM candy is why Hershey was expressing so much early concern about GM sugar. Nutrageous contains nine ingredients derived from GM plants: three of these are sugar; four are artificial sugars; one is lecithin; and one is an oil derivative. Is it reasonable to worry about the sugar when there's so much GM corn and soya in there anyway?

Perhaps Hershey already had its sights on the European market back in 2008, and realised the GM-jitters there warranted a dose of PR to brand itself as 'the good guy'. Indeed in 2010, the Company established a new European subsidiary in London.

The story has just taken an interesting new twist.

ASDA has struck an “exclusive” deal with Hershey to sell its products from February 2011. The deal is dependent on the products being reformulated to use non-GM ingredients, while items which can't be reformulated will be excluded. Twenty-one lines, from solid bars to Reese's and Hershey Kisses will be stocked.

Besides the reformulation, the transportation and storage of the ingredients have been confirmed GM-free or are cleaned before use with non-GM products.

The reason given by ASDA for demanding non-GM candy is that customers in the UK do not currently wish to see GM ingredients in these products.

If this is true, it suggests the Nutrageous bars on just about every supermarket sweet shelf aren't selling too well.

Alternatively, it could be just the PR stunt ASDA needs at the moment.

Be aware that, in May 2010, in a Hershey-style shift of position on GM, ASDA very quietly dropped its non-GM animal feed policy on poultry and eggs. Such a sudden, hush-hush change in policy could happen again at any time.

P.S. Don't swallow the scaremongerers who are trying to tell you GM feed is running out and that going GM-free will cause food prices to escalate. In 2011, the world's biggest multiple retailer, Carrefour of France, found GM-free feed to be in sufficient supply for it to label its animal products 'raised with GM'. Higher costs of GM feed arise at present largely because the cost of segration falls, ironically, on the non-GM supply chain: even with this extra burden, the prices differential is not huge (at worst, a couple of pence on a dozen eggs).

SOURCES:

• Sean Poulter, Supermarkets urged to follow in the French footsteps and label food that isn't GM, Daily Mail, 12.11.10
• Jonathan Birchall, Hershey targets UK and Europe, Financial Times, 7.12.10
• Urgent action: keep our poultry GM-feed-free, GM Freeze Release 3.01.11
• Asda Hershey deal to supply non-GMO products, message from Peter Melchett and the Soil Association, 22.12.10
• LOOKING FORWARD TO 2008 – GM-free Scotland News, December 2007
• BEAT THE BEET – GM-free Scotland News, March 2009
• OUTRAGEOUS NUTRAGEOUS – GM-free Scotland News, March 2009
• ASDA DROPS GM-FREE FEED POLICY - GM-free Scotland News, May 2010

Hershey - using GM or not?

January 2011

America's only home-spun maker of chocolate, the legendary Hershey, has been giving very mixed message on its use of GM ingredients.

In 2007, just when GM sugar-beet was heading towards US fields for the 2008 harvest, Hershey was urging farmers not to plant it.  The indications were that the Company had noted consumer resistance and had announced it would not use GM sugar in its products (see BEAT THE BEET - WHAT'S WRONG WITH ROUNDUP READY SUGAR BEET – News, March 2009).

Hershey has not traditionally been a big exporter to Europe.  However, in 2009, Hershey's 'Nutrageous' and other peanut candy bars started to appear on most supermarket shelves (see HERSHEY'S NUTRAGEOUS CHOCOLATE BARS - WHAT'S IN THEM?– News, March 2009).

Most of these were true American candy bars complete with GM ingredients.  However, non-GM versions of Nutrageous were available in some outlets.  The Company had, clearly, retained the capacity to produce non-GM candy.  Why it chose to flood a GM-unfriendly market with GM candy isn't known, but the most likely explanation seems to be the testing of the water in cahoots with UK supermarkets.

Another question raised by the GM candy is why Hershey was expressed so much early concern about GM sugar.  Nutrageous contains nine ingredients derived from GM plants: three of these are sugar; four are artificial sugars; one is lecithin; and one is an oil derivative.  Is it reasonable to worry about the sugar when there's so much GM corn and soya in there anyway?

Perhaps back in 2008 Hershey already had its sights on the European market, and realised the GM-jitters there warranted a dose of timely PR to brand itself as 'the good guy'.  Indeed in 2010, the Company established a new European subsidiary in London.

The story has just taken an interesting new twist.

ASDA has struck an “exclusive” deal with Hershey to sell its products from February 2011.  The deal is dependent on the candy being reformulated to contain non-GM ingredients, while items which can't be reformulated will be excluded.  Twenty-one lines, from solid bars to Reese's and Hershey Kisses will be stocked.

Besides reformulation, the transportation and storage of the ingredients will have been confirmed GM-free or cleaned before use with non-GM products.

The reason given by ASDA for demanding non-GM Hershey’s is that customers in the UK do not currently wish to see GM ingredients in these products.

If this is true, it suggests that the Nutrageous bars on supermarket sweet shelves aren't selling too well.

Alternatively, it could be just a PR stunt which ASDA deems politically useful at the moment.

In May 2010, in a Hershey-style shift of position on GM, ASDA very quietly dropped its non-GM animal feed policy on poultry and eggs (see News, May 2010).

OUR COMMENT

ASDA's move to ditch non-GM chicken feed had to be kept hush-hush because, to paraphrase Joanna Blythman, British consumers refuse to swallow GM and will lose trust in retailers that stock it.  Ms. Blythman also suggests that in 2011, we must remind supermarkets of this loudly and often.  (See below for how to contact supermarkets.)


P.S.  Don't swallow the scaremongerers trying to tell you GM feed is running out and that going GM-free will cause food prices to escalate.  The world's biggest multiple retailer, Carrefour of France, has found GM-free feed to be guaranteed plentiful enough for it to label its animal products 'raised without GM'.  Higher costs of GM feed arise at present largely because the cost of segregation which falls, ironically, on the non-GM supply chain: even with this extra burden, the prices differential is not huge (at worst, a couple of pence on a dozen eggs).


How to contact supermarkets

• Tesco: www.tesco.com. Phone 0845 7225533. More contact information here.
• Sainsbury's: http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/. Phone 0800 636 232. Full contact information here.
• Morrisons: http://www.morrisons.co.uk/ . Phone 0845 611 6111. Full contact information here.
• Waitrose: http://www.waitrose.com/index.aspx. Phone 0800 188 884. Full contact information here.
• Aldi: https://customerservice.aldi.co.uk/contact. Phone 0800 042 0800.
• CWS (The Co-operative Food): http://www.co-operative.coop/food/. Phone 0800 0686 727. More contact information here.
• Iceland: http://www.iceland.co.uk/. Phone 01244 842842. More contact information here.
• Lidl: http://www.lidl.co.uk/. Phone 0870 444 1234. Customer feedback form here.
• Marks and Spencer: http://www.marksandspencer.com/. Phone 0845 609 0200. More contact information here.
• Somerfield  (now part of the Co-op group): http://www.somerfield.co.uk/. Phone 0800 0686 727. More contact information here.

Please do take action and also pass this information on to others.

Many thanks!

SOURCES

• Sean Poulter, Supermarkets urged to follow in the French footsteps and label food that isn't GM, Daily Mail, 12.11.10
• Urgent action: keep our poultry GM-feed-free, GM Freeze Release 3.01.11
• Asda Hershey deal to supply non-GMO products, message from Peter Melchett and the Soil Association, 22.12.10
• Jonathan Birchall, Hershey targets UK and Europe,  Financial Times, 7.12.10
• Joanna Blythman, The Food Revolution, Sunday Herald, 2.01.11

Beat the beat - what's wrong with Roundup Ready sugar beet

News archive - March 2009. Please note links may no longer be active.

 

... GM alert

 

Herbicide-tolerant GM sugar beet was one of the GM crops being considered for commercialisation back in the 1990s. That was until the UK Farm Scale Evaluations proved the herbicide-based farming system it was designed for wasn't environmentally friendly.

 

Around the same time, Hershey's and Mars sensed their US customers wouldn't welcome GM candy-bars, and announced they would not use GM beet sugar. However, both companies have been notably silent on the issue ever since. And now we know why.

 

Last year, 2008, farmers in the US planted their first season of Monsanto's Roundup Ready (RR) sugar beet. Over half the sugar in processed foods comes from sugar beet and the rest from sugar cane. The two are routinely mixed together, but food-labels don't give details of the type of sugars present. Besides candies, GM sugar in the US will now be included, unlabelled, in staple cereals, bread and baby foods.

 

One problem, of course is that GM beet hasn't been proven safe to eat. Since sugar beet is wind-pollinated and closely related to common vegetables such as chard and table beets, contamination of the food chain with unapproved GM hybrids is likely.

 

A second problem, just coming to light, concerns the safety of the Roundup herbicide residues in RR foods. Herbicide-tolerant plants actively absorb Roundup through their leaves and then transport it to other parts, such as the root, where it accumulates. In 1999, Monsanto realised that its GM beet far exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency's allowable residues of glyphosate and requested these be increased to make its GM crop legal. The result has been that the maximum 'safe' levels of glyphosate were re-set at 10 parts per million (a 50-fold increase) in fresh beet and at 25 parts per million (a 125-fold increase) in dried beet pulp which is fed to livestock. Inexplicably, regulation of the residues of other, secret and more toxic, components of the various Roundup formulations seem to be simply lumped in with glyphosate. What toxic cocktail ends up in the sugar beet harvested is unknown. What toxic cocktail is extracted and refined into processed sugar is unknown. What toxic cocktail ends up in the meat and milk of cattle fed GM beet is unknown. What science has discovered is that Roundup at only 1 parts per million can be harmful to human cells.

 

If America seems far away, remember Hershey and Mars sell their products here too, the difference being that in Europe they must be labelled as containing GM.

 

Hershey's “Reese's Nutrageous” bars with GM soya, GM corn and GM sugar listed on the label have been spotted in Sainsbury's in Scotland and they are rumoured to be in Tesco's too.

 

During the last two years, GM 'KTC' cooking oil has been on sale in Tesco, and GM 'Pride' cooking oil has been on sale in Tesco, the Co-op, and Sainsbury's. Schwartz 'Seasoned Salad Topping' with soya 'bacon-flavoured bits' containing three GM soya and one GM maize ingredients has been on sale in Sainsbury's and beyond for some time.

 

Be vigilant. If you spot any GM labels in your supermarket, please tell GM Freeze by e-mailing eva@gmfreeze.org (eva@gmfreeze.org) with details of:

• the name of the product
• the GM ingredient(s) concerned
• the name and address of the shop where you saw the item for sale
•  if at all possible, a photograph of the label stating the GM content
•  and, if you have made a complaint to the management, what response you got.

Alas, it seems time to go back to the same old letters we were writing in the 1990s asking supermarkets for lists of products on their shelves which contain GM, and pointing out we can shop elsewhere if we can't trust the food they offer. Start with Tesco and Sainsbury's:

 

Tesco customer service is customer.service@tesco.co.uk (customer.service@tesco.co.uk)

 

If you don't get a sensible reply, write to the Chief Executive, Sir Terry Leahy, Tesco, New Tesco House, Delamare Road, Cheshunt, Hertfordshire EN8 9SL

 

Sainsbury's customer service 'careline' is 0800 636 262.

 

If you don't get a sensible reply, write to the Chief Executive, Justin King, Sainsbury's, 33 Holborn, London EC1N 2HT

 

Friends or relatives in America might like to know about the Center for Food Safety's recently launched 'Non-Genetically-Modified Beet Sugar Registry '. Companies signing on to the Registry pledge not to support the introduction of GM sugar beet, to avoid using it in their products and to ask the sugar beet industry to ditch GM.

 

SOURCES

• Benachour and Seralini, Glyphosate Formulations Induce Apoptosis and Necrosis in Human Umbilical, Embryonic, and Placental Cells, Chemical research in Toxicology, 22:1 2009
• GM Sugar Beets Being Planted, Center For Food Safety Fact Sheet, June 2008
• Tell Mars and Hershey's to sign the Non-GM Beet Sugar Registry, GM Freeze Press Release, 13.02.09
• Products containing GM in the UK, GM Freeze, 20.02.09, www.gmfreeze.org
• Friends of the Earth Real Food News www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/food_and_biotechnology, 13.02.09.
• GM Animal Feed – The hidden GM in your trolley, GM Freeze leaflet, 2009.

Waves of gene pollution

January 2011

A land-mark federal court case in the US in 2010 has, at last, formally recognised the existence of real dangers from gene pollution, and at the same time highlighted the irresponsible attitude of regulators and industry.