Big Island *takes first step* in banning GMO's

[Rob Tucker]

"Soon after GM soy was introduced into the British diet, researchers at the York Laboratory reported that allergies to soy had skyrocketed by 50% in a single year. The GMO soy was removed from the market by a concerned government."

From a British press (read the whole article):

British supermarkets, GMO soya and birth defects
Published on: Sat May 25, 2013
Author: Sue Branford
Source: LAB
UK supermarkets and the destructive GMO soya boom in South America

Over the last year the UK’s six largest supermarkets have all quietly dropped their non-GMO feed requirement for poultry and eggs. Tesco, Sainsbury, Marks and Spencer, Morrison, ASDA and the Co-op are now selling chickens fed on genetically modified soya. Few consumers are aware of the change, for the retailers are not labeling their products as containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The Co-op and Tesco have also misled their customers by claiming that GM feed given to animals is not detectable in animal products. This is not true. Several research studies have found that GM DNA from animal feed is present in the milk, meat, and eggs that people eat. This has been confirmed by the UK Government’s Food Standards Agency. If you would like to support a campaign to get the supermarkets to rethink their decision, sign the petition organised by GMO Action and write to the supermarkets.

RT: This article is not pro GMO. I bring this forward to question the statement that GM soya has been banned in England. According to this article it has not... though the author is concerned about it.

http://lab.org.uk/british-supermarkets-g...th-defects


And this (read the whole article for context) It is quite interesting:


Case-Study of Contemporary European Regulatory Politics

Authors: Diahanna Lynch, and David Vogel

The Regulation of GMOs in Europe and the United States: A Case-Study of Contemporary European Regulatory Politics - the-regulation-of-gmos-in-europe-and-the-united-states-a-case-study-of-contemporary-european-regulatory-politics

Publisher Council on Foreign Relations Press

Release Date April 5, 2001

This paper was prepared for a workshop on trans-Atlantic differences in GMO regulation sponsored by the Council of Foreign Relations. It draws in part on an unpublished paper, "Apples and Oranges: Comparing the Regulation of Genetically Modified Food in Europe and the United States," co-authored with Diahanna Lynch.

INTRODUCTION

This paper seeks to place the divergent approaches of the European Union and United States toward the introduction and marketing of genetically modified (GM) foods and seeds in a broader context. It argues that an important key to understanding why Europe and the United States have chosen to regulate identical technologies in such a dissimilar fashion has to do with recent changes in politics of risk regulation in Europe. From the 1960s through the mid 1980s, the regulation of health, safety and environmental risks was generally stricter in the United States than in Europe. Since the mid 1980s, the obverse has often been the case: a wide array of European consumer and environmental regulations, including those governing GMOs, are now more restrictive than in the United States. In a number of important respects, European regulatory politics and policies over the last fifteen years resemble those of the United States between the late 1960s and the mid 1980s. They are often politicized, highly contentious and characterized by a suspicion of science and a mistrust of both government and industry. By contrast, the US regulation of GMOs resembles the European regulatory style of the 1970s: regulators have worked cooperatively with industry and been supportive of technological innovation, while non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have enjoyed little access to the policy process. [1]

This paper begins by reviewing comparative studies of health, safety and environmental regulation in Europe and the United States in order to place contemporary cross-Atlantic regulatory differences in an historical context. It then summarizes the evolution of American and European policies governing GMOs. The third section of the paper reviews a number of explanations for the differences in European and American regulatory policies toward this new agricultural technology, and the final section advances an explanation rooted in the emergence of a new European approach toward risk regulation in general, and food safety in particular.

http://www.cfr.org/agricultural-policy/r...tics/p8688