Activists at the World Food Business Summit in Rome, Italy say no to GMOs
The recording was blasted into the conference at the Hilton
Hotel, which is being attended by the world's top food executives.
The recording was in over 20 languages so our friends at the top
can have no excuses about misunderstanding the message.
To drive the point home our activists also abseiled down from
the Hilton roof with banners reading 'GE Food is bad business'
while others representing the 25 EU nations were outside the summit
carrying the message, 'Listen to consumers: No to GMOs in our food,
feed and fields'
A group of interested delegates came out to see what the action
was about, however our activists noticed that they had covered up
their identity badges. Whether the delegates did this because they
didn't want their company to be associated with such an activity is
unclear. One thing is for sure though transparency with regard to
GE is not part of their corporate language.
It is not just in Europe that consumers don't want to eat GE,
recent Deloitte research on US consumer attitudes found that 67
percent of US consumers are concerned about eating GE food.
"Poll after poll has shown that a majority of consumers prefer
GE-free food, and an even bigger majority of consumers want GE food
to at least be labelled, including in China and the US," commented
Federica Ferrario of Greenpeace Italy.
"What we never see is consumers demanding GE food, begging the
million dollar question: how come the global food industry isn't
doing more to make sure supply meets demand rather than force
feeding GE food to consumers?"
The global food industry often acts as a barrier to the
introduction of GE labelling legislation by claiming that sourcing
non-GE ingredients is next to impossible or that GE labelling is
unfeasible or prohibitively expensive. These claims are totally
inaccurate and misleading to consumers. They only serve to hide the
fact that non-GE ingredients are, or can be, plentiful and that GE
labelling, far from being impossible, has been implemented in
Europe for years and has not resulted in any consumer-end price
increase.
The US government, while attacking European GE labelling and
safety legislation via the WTO, is denying its own citizens the
basic right to know when GE ingredients are used in their food.
This policy is supported by the main food trade association and
its members, many of whom are present at the Rome meeting. They
insist on being dishonest about the realities of GE labelling and
sourcing non-GE ingredients.
"US and Canadian companies along with their trade associations
should stop deliberately obstructing the introduction of GE
labelling legislation in North America. What are they scared of? Do
they believe that consumers in the U.S. will reject GE food in the
same way European consumers are showing today, if they are given
the choice?" said our international GE campaigner Lindsay
Keenan.
Find out more
-
Click here to hear a sample of the messages sent to the Rome
summit from these countries.(Italy, UK, The Netherlands, Spain
(Castillano), France, Belgium, Russia, Czech Republic, Denmark,
Finland, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Spain (Catalan), Hungary,
Portugal, Marta, Slovenia, Sweden)
-
Read the letter presented to the delegates in Rome from
Greenpeace.
- Check out what is happening in your
country
- For all the latest GE news click here
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