August 2, 1999
The Independent (London)
The US baby-food giant, Gerber, is rethinking its buying strategy
after the environmental organization, Greenpeace, discovered GM
maize in its children's cereal products and made its findings public.
The company said it will buy only "organic" maize from
now on and will use the absence of GM grains as a marketing aid.
Gerber's action, disclosed by The Wall Street Journal, is the result
of an inquiry to the company from Charles Margulis, a Greenpeace
campaigner living in New York. Two months ago, he faxed a letter
to Gerber's chief executive officer, asking whether the company
used GM products in its baby food. If so, which products? and "what
steps have you taken, if any, to ensure you are not using"
GM ingredients? He asked for a reply within five business days.
Mr Margulis did not get his reply. But what followed, according
to The Wall Street Journal, was a frenzied response that penetrated
to the top of Gerber's parent company, the Swiss conglomerate, Novartis,
in the space of four weeks and a change of policy affecting an established
product worth $1bn (£625m) in annual sales.
Now, Gerber is abandoning some of its long-standing maize and soya
bean suppliers. This will increase costs - both in broken contracts
and the purchase of more expensive organic replacements. But baby
food, as Greenpeace well understands, is an especially emotive issue.
The president of Novartis's US consumer health operation, Al Piergallini,
said: "I have got to listen to my customers. So, if there is
an issue, or even an inkling of an issue, I am going to make amends.
We have to act preemptively."
Whether Gerber will label the resulting products "GM-free"
is another matter, however.
The view of the US Food and Drug Administration, which has approved
licenses for specific GM crops, is that they are safe and a potential
boon to farmers and consumers alike. This assessment is now enshrined
as official US policy.
But middle-class consumers are now asking whether they should not
be worried about GM produce if Europeans feel so strongly about
it, and American farmers, persuaded by manufacturers that GM seed
will increase yields and reduce costs, now fear they could be landed
with crops they cannot export at a time when agricultural prices
are falling.
The first chink in the US adminstration's armor of confidence came
last month when the Agriculture Secretary, Dan Glickman, announced
extra regional monitoring of GM crops and a review of licensing
procedures. While the pharmaceutical industry professed itself unconcerned,
it is still adamantly opposed to labeling GM products as such. Indeed,
the pervasiveness of GM soya and maize in the US make labeling almost
impossible: there are so few products that can be guaranteed GM-free.
To establish that Gerber baby food contained GM produce, Greenpeace
had to send samples to a laboratory in Britain. It was found that
processed food in jars did not contain GM elements, but that the
dry cereal did. With no response from Gerber by then, Greenpeace
made the results public.
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