Markets GM and organic

QOD: "This past summer, anticipating protests against biotech foods, McDonald's basically told its suppliers it would no longer purchase any genetically engineered potatoes. And as a result, the market for genetically engineered potatoes in the United States just about vanished."

4 items of relevance to the news of still more GM FREE products:
1. Big food company power in commodity markets
2. Market likely to direct GM food future - UPI on FDA
3. Re: Craig Sams article and big corporate involvement in organics
4. UK House of Commons Ag Committee on organic farming and big business
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1. Big food company power in commodity markets
EXCERPT from ERIC SCHLOSSER TALKS ABOUT HIS BOOK, "FAST FOOD NATION: THE DARK SIDE OF THE ALL-AMERICAN MEAL"
FRESH AIR SHOW: January 22, 2001

MARTY MOSS-COANE, host: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Marty Moss-Coane sitting in for Terry Gross. The new book "Fast Food Nation" isn't just about how fast food has changed our diet, it's about how fast food has transformed our landscape, economy, work force and popular culture.

SCHLOSSER: ...And, you know, McDonald's purchasing decisions have an incredible, incredible effect on commodity markets. This past summer, anticipating protests against biotech foods, McDonald's basically told its suppliers it would no longer purchase any genetically engineered potatoes. And as a result, the market for genetically engineered potatoes in the United States just about vanished.
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2. Market likely to direct GM food future
By ALEX CUKAN, UPI Science News
[some timely thoughts from US given GMOs reaching the end of the road in the UK despite strong support from its well-lobbied political elite]
http://www.vny.com/cf/News/upidetail.cfm?QID=153758
Saturday, 20 January 2001 14:22 (ET)

No matter what the U.S. federal government decides to do about labeling and reviewing genetically modified food, it's the market that may well determine the products' future.

For example, food-producer giant Archer Daniels Midland decided last year to segregate its GM food products from its conventional food products for sale in Europe and Japan, where GM labeling is required and consumers prefer conventional food. Australia, New Zealand and Brazil are expected to require GM labeling as well sometime this year.

"We are currently paying a premium of 5 to10 percent more per bushel from farmers to test corn and soybeans to ensure that they are not genetically modified for our export markets," Larry Cunningham, spokesman for Illinois-based ADM, told United Press International. "If market conditions changed, we would do it here too."

Other U.S.-based food producers, including Frito-Lay, Gerber, Heinz, Seagram and Hain, have decided not to use GM food in their products.

Currently, the federal government considers GM crops to be "essentially the same as those produced by conventional breeding methods," so the FDA

does not require the same testing and regulatory controls as required for food additives.

On Wednesday, however, the Food and Drug Administration did announce draft guidelines for manufacturers who want to voluntarily label food as genetically modified. The agency also proposed a rule that would require the FDA to review any new GM food.

GM food is created when DNA from one organism is spliced to the DNA of a plant.It can change the quantities of proteins, fats and oils in food, give the food a longer shelf life and protect the plant from pests and viruses. But some experts as well as consumers are worried GM products could introduce any number of unexpected effects, from food allergies to pesticide resistance.

"In the absence of GM labeling, those who want to avoid GM food for whatever reason have to go to the organic market," Ronnie Cummins of Organic Consumers Association of Little Marais, Minn., told UPI. "Europe is ahead of the United States on GM labeling because of mad cow disease -- their governments told them the beef was safe and it turned out not to be true."

Public trust is essential to the future of the agricultural biotechnology industry in the United States, points out the Consumer Federation of America Foundation, a Washington-based consumer group that recently issued a report advocating the regulation of GM food and GM labeling.

Requiring GM labeling in the United States, however -- where almost 16 percent of the GM food in the world is grown -- could be burdensome because of its prevalence in the food supply.

In 1999, 33 percent of all corn grown in the United States was GM, as are 57 percent of all soybeans. Those two foods are found in a lot of processed food, said OCA's Cummins.

But because increasing consumer pressure against GM food, he asserted, the growth of GM food production is leveling off and the "writing is on the wall" for its end entirely.

>From 1996 to 2000, GM products grew 25-fold, from 1.7 million hectares in 1996 to 44.2 million hectares in 2000, said Clive James of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications, a nonprofit group hosted by Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. GM crops worldwide grew by 8 percent last year -- from 39.9 million hectares in 1999 to 43 million hectares in 2000 -- compared to a 44 percent increase from 998 to 1999.

While corn, soybeans, cotton and canola are the four main GM crops grown inthe United States, GM potatoes and tomatoes have largely vanished from farmers' fields.

Meanwhile, farmers are finding their own ways to ensure their crops can be sold in the global marketplace. ISO 9000 is the term used by the International Organization for Standardization, an independent agency in Geneva Switzerland, founded to help farmers move products across international borders.

For a farm to be ISO-certified, it must buy seed from ISO-certified companies. Storage and planting are documented as well as fertilizer andpesticide applications. The farms are certified after ISO auditors personally inspect each farm and its fields. The total cost can run about $4,000 per farm.

"It may seem like a lot of work and expense," Iowa farmer Russ Steffensmeier told the agricultural magazine Farm Journal. "But we need to ready for the global marketplace."

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2. from WJ WAIT - Re: Craig Sams article
Craig Sams, President of Whole Earth Foods, Ltd. in his December 7, 2000
A Plea to Set Aside Paranoia in the AgBioView Post, seems to find it hopeful that:

“The "Organic Food Industry" nowadays includes Nestle, General Mills, Heinz, Safeway, major UK retailers own brands (Tesco alone has over 300 private label organic lines), Unilever and Mars, to name just a few of the leading lights of the industry.”

I am not so optimistic.

If these companies are involved, I believe it is highly questionable whether the resulting food is actually going to be organic. I think that the USDA, with its new organic standards, is working hand in glove with these very companies (it always has, does anybody really believe that things have changed?).

The key point is that under the new USDA rules no other certification can appear on a food label. It means that whatever they call organic is organic, by fiat, and nobody can question, modify, compete with, or extend the certification, period. Under this rule, “organic” on a food label is not

going to have any more significance than “natural,” which means nothing at all.
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4. UK House of Commons Ag Committee on organic farming and big business

Despite the contribution of the big chains in driving up demand for organic produce, the report suggests that:

" ”¦ these efforts have not removed all suspicions within the organic sector of the motives of the multiple retailers and of their ultimate impact upon the development of organic production in the UK. The basis of these concerns is both specific to the organic sector, in that the whole concept of multiple retailers sits uneasily with the "purist" organic ethos of local food for local people, and general in the perception of many in the farming industry - organic and conventional - that the power of the supermarkets is detrimental to the interests of producers."