Campbell, Others Targeted on Gene-Altered Foods
By Bill Murray
Washington, July 19 (Bloomberg) -- Campbell Soup Co., Kellogg Co. and other food makers are the targets of a national campaign by activists who want the industry and the U.S. government to require pre-market testing and labeling of genetically engineered food.
More than 200 chefs, religious leaders, doctors and scientists have endorsed an effort to mount protests in 20 cities against an industry that is increasingly dependent on these crops for its profits, organizers said.
"This is the first time that consumer, health and environmental advocates have come together as a unified front in the United States to insist on safety testing and labeling of genetically engineered foods," said Brent Blackwelder, president of Friends of the Earth, in a statement.
Currently the U.S. Food and Drug Administration doesn't test such foods, although health concerns have led Europe and Japan to spurn the technology that creates the ingredients for the products. Farmers planted half of the U.S. soybean acreage and 38 percent of corn acreage in 1999 using seeds whose genes were modified to repel pests or resist disease.
The Grocery Manufacturers of America, a Washington-based industry trade group whose 140 members include Campbell and Kellogg, disputed the claim by activists that the food poses health risks.
Biotechnology
"Food biotechnology is well regulated by three federal agencies, (and) it has been deemed safe by those agencies as well as the world's leading scientific bodies" in part as a result of thousands of field trials, said Brian Sansoni, a spokesman for the trade group.
Officials at Campbell and Kellogg weren't immediately available to comment on the planned protests against gene-modified food.
The biotechnology and food industries as well as the U.S. government say that the foods are safe and will be needed to feed a rapidly growing world population. The European Union and other critics argue that the foods haven't been proven safe for human consumption.
Almost 70 percent of the U.S. public thinks the government should require more extensive labeling of ingredients in gene- modified foods, according to a poll of more than 1,000 Americans conducted last year by StrategyOne, the research division of Edelman Public Relations Worldwide.
Three of every five people surveyed said they were unaware that about half the nation's food contains ingredients derived from altered genes.
Representative Dennis Kucinich, an Ohio Democrat who has introduced legislation to require labels on gene-altered food, said "every American citizen must have the right to choose what foods they and their family eat, and absent the genetically modified label, they'll not have this choice.
"The rapid emergence of genetically engineered food into our nation's food supply requires us to be confident that every health safety and environmental concern has been fully examined," Kucinich said.
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Carl
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