CropGen

Supermarkets Are Victims Of Anti-Science Lobby

The ruling by the Advertising Standards Association (ASA) against two supermarkets in respect of their GM and organic foods leaflets raises critical questions about information and choice.

In its May adjudications, the ASA criticised the supermarkets for misleading consumers about the safety of GM foods and the properties of organic products. The ASA ruling might suggest that supermarkets are guilty of contributing to the misinformation that surrounds biotechnology but, in truth, they are victims of the anti-science, anti-reason environment that campaigning groups continue to promote.

Anti-GM campaigners consistently invoke the right of consumers to choose what they eat. But what choice is there if GM foods are kept off the supermarket shelves by anti-GM rhetoric? For real choice there also has to be an option to buy GM.

Those who believe in the potential benefits that biotechnology can bring in terms of health and the environment, in the UK and abroad, also have a right - the right to express their support for biotechnology at the checkout. For the time being at least, campaigning groups have managed to compel some supermarkets to turn their backs on biotechnology. Several chains have been forced into defensive and sometimes untenable positions as they scramble to maintain competitiveness.

"Those who support biotechnology and believe in the benefits it can bring must provide supermarkets with evidence that they too are a force to be reckoned with," said Professor Vivian Moses, Chairman of the CropGen Panel. "Not through stunts or gestures, but through patient yet insistent action at local level."

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