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in turn means easy access for consumers to information about what they buy. Local means short journeys, so that’s good for fuel consumption. Local means the freshest food. Local is welfare friendly – livestock are notoriously stressed by long road journeys.

      Local means less dependence on a centralised food supply. So when the food chain is hit by a crisis, such as foot and mouth or another animal disease, the movement of food around the UK is minimal and easier to track.

      A culture of local marketing boosts local economies. According to the New Economics Foundation (NEF), every £10 spent with a local food business, employing local people and buying ingredients locally, generates £25 for the local economy, compared with just £14 spent with a non-local food business. The NEF, among other environmental organisations, believes that if the major supermarket chains adopted local buying policies it would save the future of farming and fishing in the UK.

      Local is good for regional identity, and for society. How much more distinctive for roadside cafés and motorway service stations to offer each region’s favourite pie, gooey cake, curry or apple juice? Motorway meals would for once be worth some discussion, some analysis – you can’t exactly discuss the excitement of finding yet another KFC meal deal while travelling, or yet another reheated sausage roll and can of Coke. Regional distinctiveness is also good for tourism – so that’s more cash in the tin.

      Local can fall flat on its face in big cities especially, where hectic lifestyles can distract from ethical shopping, and enormous rents prevent all but the richest food chains getting a look-in on high streets – or staying on them if they are already there. But the success of farmers’ markets and food co-operatives speaks for itself, and the concept of local food is an earnest but not unusual subject for city shoppers frustrated by the dullness of food shopping.

      Genetic modification (GM)

      A war of technology against tradition, and public will. The majority of British consumers continue to reject the idea of genetically modified foods being sold in our shops. Supporters of genetic modification say it will remove the ills of pesticide use and create better-functioning foods that can feed greater populations. GM’s detractors say the technology is not properly tested and its health impact not thoroughly monitored (some approved GM crops such as maize and soya are in use outside Europe). They also question the long-term benefits of GM as the answer to world food shortages, and whether it can bring the promised wealth so desperately needed by farmers in poorer countries or simply make a few seed-manufacturing biotech companies rich beyond their dreams. Opponents to GM suspect that the development of terminator seeds, plants modified so their seeds cannot be used after flowering, is also a ruse to make money and will never bring wealth to the farmers that grow them.

      The functional aspects of GM foods remain uncertain. For example, one biotech company’s early promises to bring vitamin-enriched ‘golden’ rice to India (for free) have yet to take off.

      While the pro-GM sector fights anti-GM voices, GM ‘contamination’ is spreading anyway. It is now hard for UK farmers to avoid giving GM feed to animals unless they are in an organic system that polices the source of feed or a traditional system in which all food for livestock is produced only by the farm. (It is argued that because feed passes through an animal, only nutrients are absorbed and not genetic material, but opponents to GM say that there is some evidence of GM DNA material remaining and passing through the gut of animals. They add that testing the effects of GM feed is not adequate, and that labels should indicate when livestock have been given GM feed.) In the case of crops, GM trials can let seeds ‘loose’ on the environment and it is known that bees can carry pollen from a GM crop trial on to a conventional crop for some unofficial crossbreeding. It is also a fact that the organic sector would be damaged, if not destroyed, by the arrival of GM in the UK. After a time, it would be impossible for them to guarantee their food as GM free.

      GM has an image problem. Few of us are at ease with the concept of enormous salmon, growing so fast you can almost watch them do it; moreover we fear the unconventional combinations of human with animal or animal with plant genes. But what consumers and environment groups are most fed up with is the arrogance of GM big business. The swagger of the biotech firms and their closeness to those in power is disturbing. Their apparent refusal to listen to the arguments against them, painting their detractors as muck-spreading hippies, provokes cries that they will eventually get their way and permission will be given for genetic modification to come into general use.

      As it stands in the UK, seven plants that could be used in animal feed have Part C approvals from the EU, meaning that they are licensed to be sold. Two of these are herbicide-tolerant and insect-resistant maize varieties (made by the biotech firm Syngenta); two are herbicide-tolerant maizes (made by Bayer and Monsanto); there is an insect-resistant maize and a herbicide-tolerant soya bean (both made by Monsanto) and finally a herbicide-tolerant oilseed rape (made by Bayer). Three of the maize crops are licensed for cultivation in the EU, although none has yet been grown here. A larger number of GM crops are licensed to be grown outside the EU, in North and South America, South Africa, China, India and other parts of the Far East.

      The US Department of Agriculture estimates that 46 per cent of the US maize crop and 93 per cent of the soya bean crop is genetically modified., More than 98 per cent of soya and 55 per cent of maize grown in Argentina is GM.

      But can you tell if food is GM or has GM ingredients? In 2004 the EU established new rules for GM labelling: any food sold in the EU that is genetically modified or contains GMOs (genetically modified organisms) must carry this information on the label (or immediately next to non-packaged food). The presence of GM ingredients in ready-made foods (e.g. flour, oil, glucose syrup) must be shown on labels, but products made using GM technology (cheese produced with GM enzymes, for example) do not have to be labelled. Meat, milk and eggs from animals given GM feed also do not need to be labelled. Food that accidentally contains less than 0.9 per cent approved (by the EU) GM ingredients or 0.5 per cent non-approved GM ingredients need not be labelled. You can see why detractors of GM insist that gradual GM contamination of our food is taking place.

      In January 2006 the organic sector reacted with horror when the EU announced plans to allow food to be labelled organic even when it contains 0.9 per cent of GM ingredients. The Soil Association says that any more than 0.1 per cent is unacceptable. They and the other environmental organisations are now campaigning against the EU plans.

      The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) tests GM foods on a case-by-case basis, deciding whether to permit them to be sold in Europe after public consultation and referring to the various relevant food safety and agricultural authorities in member states. In the UK this means the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). Both the FSA and DEFRA have not exactly spoken out against GM, so it is no wonder its opponents are concerned. Shoppers are quite justified in opposing GM. To take part in public consultations regarding the licensing of GM crops, keep an eye on the EFSA website, www.efsa.eu.int.

      Pesticides and other chemicals

      For descriptive ease, I have used the word pesticide in this book as a cover-all term for agricultural chemicals, which include weed killers (herbicides) and fungicides.

      In September 2004 the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP) issued a serious warning about the effects of pesticides and our government’s failure to tackle the issue. The RCEP report covered health risks to bystanders and residents exposed to the use of pesticides on land near their homes. Its recommendations included a re-think of how risk itself is measured, making it clear that current risk assessment is inadequate. The lobby against pesticides is understandably elated at the report, but its concerns about pesticides are much wider. It alludes to the dangers farmers all over the world face when handling pesticides, the pollution of the environment, depletion of the ozone layer and the long-term effects of hormone- and endocrine-disrupting chemicals on human and animal reproductive systems.

      In 2005 agricultural chemical watchdog, the Pesticides Action Network UK (PAN UK), published the List of Lists, detailing all the hundreds of dangerous pesticides in use around the world and how they can affect

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