Like to eat GM food?
On one side are the giant global companies led by Mosanto, Syngenta (whose evolution from Ciba, Geigy, ICI, Zeneca, Astra, etc, is a corporate engineering feat in itself), Bayer Bioscience, Dow Agro-sciences, DupPont, and the governments they control, chiefly the USA, and others that the Americans have cajoled and pressurised. On June 23, 2003, President Bush even attacked Europe, which supplies 7 times more food aid to Sub-Saharan Africa than the USA, for being responsible for the famine in Africa.
More knowledgeable about ecology and the environment than their American counterpart, the Europeans in general were very cautious about the acceptance of GM products and questioned their alleged benefits. They wanted tests to be run and debates on the subject before decisions were taken. This did not suit the makers and war ensued. As always, free trade laws were brought into play and the Europeans were trapped by the every device they had helped invent.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. The US took the issue to WTO in May and forced the European Commission to provide a time frame to examine the question of GM products after which it would start selling GM products in Europe. Caught between legal pressure from the USA and the will of its own citizens the Commission issued a decision this summer that it would lift the ban on GM Food but subject it to labelling, whereby the consumers were at least aware of what they were buying. Once again, this was not acceptable and the US is threatening legal action saying labelling amounts to branding GM products with a black skull and bones marks.
In America almost all supermarket food contains GM ingredients but labels show no hint of this. Ironically, this is the country that proclaims Customer is King. Polls show that 70% of Europeans do not want GM products and 94% want to know if it is in what they buy. Can the customer be wrong in this case?
The variance between the European Commissions position and the desire of its people has prompted many separate battles within this larger war. Most of the EU countries are fighting this on a national level trying to create GM-free zones.