SUNDAY TELEGRAPH(LONDON)

October 10, 1999:

International: US alarm grows over GM foods 
Congressmen call for labelling
by DAVID WASTELL in Washington

AMERICAN consumers are finally waking up to the international controversy
over genetically modified food, with members of Congress joining a growing
clamour for compulsory labelling and leading companies searching for
alternative ingredients for some products. In a country where 70 per cent
of the items on supermarket shelves have some kind of GM content, there are
signs that American shoppers are gradually taking up the concerns over GM
food that have swept Britain and Europe. With half of American corn and one
third of its soya beans containing transplanted genes, most of the
country's best-known household products would be at risk if a consumer
backlash took hold - from Coca-Cola to tomato ketchup, breakfast cereals to
cake mixes. Until recently, most American consumers were oblivious to the
fact that they routinely eat and drink artificially-altered combinations of
genes.

But recent publicity, including last week's high-profile climbdown by the
American company Monsanto on plans to insert a so-called "terminator gene"
into its cornseed, is leading to a sharp increase in awareness. It has led
to farmers across America's corn-growing heartlands wondering whether the
bumper crops they are harvesting - at least half of them from genetically
- -engineered seed - will be worth growing in the same form again. A Gallup
poll published in America last week surprised many in the food industry by
finding that 68 per cent of adults surveyed wanted labelling of food that
contained GM ingredients.