London (November 4th, 2007) – At the height of the UK’s anti-GM hysteria in the late 1990s, Waitrose claimed to be the first of the major supermarket chains to remove GM-containing products from their shelves. Could it be that that is about to change?

In Hardtalk on October 26th, the BBC’s Stephen Sackur talked to Mark Price, managing director of Waitrose, a supermarket chain which has been very active in recent years promoting organic produce and rejecting GM.

Mr. Price commented that, believe it or not, the carbon footprint of GM crops was actually less than that of organic. That he saw as a “real dilemma” with which his company was having to wrestle.

Pressed about whether there might be a future for GM at Waitrose, Mr. Price said “…we’ll have to look very seriously at it from next year on…. the way the world markets are going at the moment, and the GM production elsewhere, we may be forced into a play where the UK has to consider using GM in its own label.”

Stephen Sackur pushed him further: are you now actively considering putting GM products into your stores?

Not quite that, replied Mr. Price: “What we are thinking about is what happens if world supply switches predominantly to GM and we have no option but to source GM to put into the products that we have”.

Will the customers buy?, asked Mr. Sackur. Mr. Price saw “….a really big educational job to do with the consumer if that turns out to be the case and the rest of the world has gone to GM and we are standing alone in non-GM because there is not enough on this island to support all of the needs of the products that we have in hand”.

Mr. Price closed with an intriguing remark about Waitrose’s role as an industry leader: “We’ve always found ourselves in a leadership position, we were the first to take GM out and we may well be in a place where we have to explain to our customers why now it has to go back in. We are not at that point now; we may be in a few years’ time.”

It might be worth UK residents keeping an eye on what’s on sale in your local Waitrose.

Lord Haskins of Skidby, former chairman of Northern Foods, has reinforced the message. Speaking on food inflation and the rise of the world population at the Scottish Agricultural College's pre-conference dinner at Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh, he said: “We need dramatic scientific innovations and improvement in the performance of poorer farmers, as well as less waste by consumers”.

"The Luddite views in Western Europe and America are now on the wane. Folk are gradually beginning to accept the arguments for GM technology…, Science and technology were essential to help farmers achieve the 50% increase in arable productivity that was needed in the next 40 years to feed the world's increasing population."

Sources:

1. Mark Price. BBC News – Hardtalk (26.10.07) (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/hardtalk/7063487.stm)

2. 'Luddite views’ on GM crops waning, says Lord Haskins. The Herald (14.11.07) (http://www.theherald.co.uk/business/farming/display.var.1830898.0.0.php)

<<<back