Co-op becomes first UK retailer to reject gene-edited food farminguk.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from farminguk.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The Co-op has become the first UK supermarket is the first to say it will not stock products made from untested and unregulated ‘genetically-edited’ plants and animals. The move is in response to an appeal for UK supermarkets to back strong regulation of new gene-edited crops and animals. The #NotInMySupermarket campaign is a response to the current UK government consultation on removing regulations and labelling from plants and animals in the food chain created using
Supermarket lends voice to campaign opposed to deregulation of gene editing in the UK Leading supermarket chain, Co-op, has expressed caution over the UK government’s review into the future legislative approach to gene editing of crops and livestock in England.
The Consultation on the Regulation of Genetic Technologies was launched by the UK s Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) on January 7 and will run until March 17, 2021.
EU legislation controlling the use of GMOs was retained in the UK at the end of the transition period, after December 31, 2020. This retained legislation requires that all GE organisms are classified as GMOs irrespective of whether they could be produced by traditional breeding methods.
How is Slow Food Keeping GMOs Out of Europe? 28 January 2021 Alice Poiron
Slow Food has been actively involved in the fight against GMOs for decades, and is making its voice heard among decision makers, particularly in Italy, the United Kingdom, and Brussels, as new gene editing techniques are being pushed by industry lobbyists, with the so-called aim to produce food more sustainably.
In Europe, the debate on “transgenic” GMOs – whereby foreign genes are introduced into food or animals to give the organism new properties or traits that it does not naturally have, has quieted down in the last two decades as the broad majority of EU countries have decided to ban the production of GMOs on their land. However, it is the deregulation of new gene editing techniques (referred to by the industry as “New Breeding Techniques”), including CRISPR-Cas9, that is worrying civil society organizations including Slow Food.