In what it calls a “damning assessment” of the UK’s top ten supermarkets, campaign group GM Freeze has found that consumers are being kept in the dark about how far GM has crept into the UK food chain.
Launching its Feed me the Truth campaign, it ranked supermarkets against a five-star standard on their policy commitment to supporting and developing non-GM supply lines, the information they supply to consumers and the availability of non-GM-fed products in their stores.
According to GM Freeze, nine out of the ten stores performed so badly on the rating that they received a zero rating with non-GM-fed products available outside their organic ranges and no plans to improve. Waitrose was awarded two stars while Aldi, Asda, the Co-operative, Iceland, Lidl, Marks & Spencer, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s and Tesco all received a zero rating.
The campaign group says that although supermarkets across the UK imposed well publicised bans on GM feed in the production of own-brand products until 2013, this has now changed. According to a new YouGov poll, only 21% of adults in Great Britain are aware that no UK supermarket currently has such a ban in place, with almost a third (31%) believing that at least one supermarket has a ban and 48% of respondents saying they “don’t know”.
“The GM crops being fed to our farm animals are grown in ways that harm people, animals and the environment,” says GM Freeze director Liz O’Neill. “These crops aren’t allowed to be grown in the UK and many people don’t want anything to do with them.
“GM ingredients have to be labelled so consumers can vote with their wallets but GM animal feed is completely hidden from view, despite strong public support for labelling of GM-fed products. It has taken experienced campaigners weeks of correspondence to get a straight answer out of some of the supermarkets and in most cases that answer is that GM feed is being used across the board. Consumers who want to choose food produced responsibly, fairly and sustainably don’t stand a chance.”
