Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Mar 15 2005 (IPS) — A renewed campaign was launched against GM foods to mark Consumers Day Tuesday.

The campaign launched in many countries is focused on the demand for labelling of genetically modified (GM) foods. ”In about a third of countries some form of labelling is in place,” David Cuming, GM campaigns manager with Consumers International told IPS. ”But other countries are still denying consumers the right to choose.”

These include the United States, Canada and Argentina, the largest manufacturers of GM foods, Cuming said. ”There is a ‘voluntary’ legislation, which means a company can label if it chooses, which pretty much guarantees they will not be labelling.”

That is despite recent surveys that show that 80 to 90 percent of consumers in the United States and Canada want food to be labelled, Cuming said.

Several consumer groups in these countries launched a renewed campaign Tuesday to demand labelling by law. Many of these groups are a part of Consumers International, which represents about 250 organisations in 115 countries.

The provincial government in Quebec province of Canada had promised labelling in the last election, Cuming said. Consumer groups here are again lobbying the agriculture minister to take swift action on labelling.

Anti-GM campaigns were launched in several other countries, Cuming said. These varied from a television show in Lebanon, to public meetings, demonstrations and lobbying of officials.

In Britain Consumers International (CI) members sent postcards to the delegates of Codex (the committee responsible for international food standards). In Switzerland, members of the consumers group Stiftung Für Konsumentenschutz (Foundation for Consumer Protection) distributed information in the market outside parliament. They also held a debate outside parliament as MPs held a debate on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in agriculture.

In Thailand, the Foundation for Consumers held a forum in Parliament and members demonstrated in front of public health department offices. In Spain the group FACUA (Consumers in Action) launched a website to campaign against GM foods.

CI has also produced an English translation of the book in Spanish ‘Women, Men and Consumption: Applying a Gender Lens to Consumer Education’. The book links women’s rights with consumer rights by looking at ways of bringing a gender perspective into consumer education.

The book produced by Consumer International’s office for Latin America and the Caribbean, encourages women’s rights advocates to incorporate consumer issues into their work.

”Consumers have a right to information, a right to choice and a right to safety,” CI said in a statement. ”Alternatives to GM foods must remain widely available, which means that ways must be found to establish and secure GM-free areas, and strict rules introduced to prevent contamination of conventional and organic crops. All foods containing or derived from GMOs must be independently tested and subject to international safety guidelines.”

Cuming said the insertion of GMOs into foodstuffs threatens fundamental consumer rights. ”Consumers International is concerned about GMOs because we have yet to see tangible benefits for consumers and farmers,” he said. ”We campaigned on this issue in the past and it remains at the top of the consumer agenda.”

Public opinion polls in several countries show that consumers are concerned about GM foods because of potential risks to human health.

GM technology involves transferring genes between unrelated species, which is completely different from existing conventional breeding techniques, and has yet to be proven safe.

Other major concerns are increased control of the food chain by corporations, and misleading claims about solving food supply problems and about the benefits of GMOs to farmers, CI says.