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This information is part of the Genetically modified food campaign. View the campaign.
About 'Genetically modified food'
Government and the biotech companies are now pushing very hard for wider public acceptance of GM crops. Consumer protests stopped the spread of GM through the food supply 10 years ago and we can do it again.
How you can help
The companies promoting genetically modified food make a lot of big promises for what it can achieve. We are told, in the media and through pro-GM lobbyists, that GM will increase yields, even in soils ravaged by climate change, provide extra nutrients for the malnourished and meet many of our demands for fuel through genetically modified agrofuels.
You could be forgiven for believing that such crops are ready to be put in the ground now. In fact none of the current GM crops are engineered to increase yields, to withstand drought or increasingly saline soils or to nourish the hungry, and we certainly can’t feed the world on the crops currently in production (soya, maize, rape and cotton). In the mean time great strides are being made through normal plant breeding which in many cases outperform those of proposed GM crops.
The UK Government continues to back agricultural biotechnology, to the tune of £50 million a year (compared with just £2 million for straight organic research). This money comes from taxpayers who should be insisting on a much better accounting from both government and industry of the health and environmental effects of GM.
The safety of eating GM can’t be guaranteed because there has never been a single study into the safety of eating GM food, and studies into the effects of GM crops of biodiversity show that GM crops has a devastating impact on the natural environment. What is more, once you let GM organisms loose in the natural environment you can’t take it back again. In short the bid to loosen regulations on GM in the human food chain and in agriculture is a bid to turn UK citizens and our farmland into one giant uncontrolled laboratory experiment.
We need you to add your voice to the growing concern of consumers around UK and throughout the rest of Europe to halt the spread of GM crops in the food chain and in the natural environment.
Take action by voting in our poll, by writing to the UK’s supermarkets and to your MP to voice your concern.