A forum for people interested in promoting rational choices in agriculture. There are no simple answers, but people in all parts of the world should be free to choose the best combination of seed technology, crop protection and management for their needs.

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

A choice of identical milks

I reproduce the following short article from the Financial Times in its entirety. It speaks for itself. This seems to be a victory of sorts for the anti-GM brigade but, in reality, a meaningless one. The problem is, of course, that it reinforces misleading information and unwarranted concerns.


Got milked?

Clay Harris

January 7 2006

There's been a lot of debate recently over how much choice consumers want but it's rare to find a retailer who admits offering a completely meaningless one.

J Sainsbury is "trialling" a new sort of milk: from cows raised on a diet that contains no genetically modified feed. It admits that scientific studies carried out by several "well-respected organisations" have found there is no GM DNA or protein in milk from cows fed on a GM diet. But it brags that it is the only big retailer to offer this choice.

No doubt sales will be helped by a garish flash alerting shoppers to the fact that its new product is from GM-free cows; just the sort of labelling to suggest there is something wrong with milk from GM-fed cows.

Raising doubt where there was previously none is the sort of marketing strategy that incenses government ministers trying to promote Britain as a place where science is taken seriously.

That must surely be the view of the science minister, Lord Sainsbury, who is still the supermarket chain's largest shareholder, although his shares are held in a blind trust.
Posted by: Martin Livermore / 9:23 am
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