How women took on the supermarkets over GM products - and won
by Melanie McDonagh
This is London
19 March, 1999
There has been a quiet revolution this week; what's more,
it ' s a women's revolution. What I'm talking about is the
extraordinary decision by the supermarkets Sainsbury's
and Marks & Spencer to join Iceland in not using
genetically modified ingredients in their products.
Yesterday, it was followed by the news of measures to
force eating places to designate GM maize and soya in
meals, to oblige even the smallest hotdog vendor to label
his ketchup for GM constituents. And you know who did
it? Women, that's who, because it's women who buy food
for families and women who exercise most of the
purchasing power in the above-named supermarkets.
There aren't many ways that ordinary people - that is,
women in shopping queues - can wield direct influence
over politicians, still less over the way world trade and
British agriculture is carried on. But that's precisely the
implication of what's happened.
As a result of a vigorous public debate, conducted in the
newspapers, on radio and on television, people buying
their groceries have simply walked away from anything
with "Genetically Modified" on the label. There is no other
way to interpret this decision by the supermarkets,
perhaps the most sophisticated registers of changing social
habits, except as a rational concession to consumer
preferences. Certainly it wasn't belated concern for the
environment that led Sainsbury's and the rest to reject GM
ingredients as the equivalent of a skull and crossbones on
a tin of tomato purée. Their anxiety is such that they'll even
be trying to make sure that they don't crop up in the small
print on ready-meal ingredients: things like soya oil or
lecithin.
Think about it. Quite independently of the Government -
actually, full in the face of the Government - we've actually
changed the course of the entire debate about food
production. If supermarkets give the no-no to GM
foodstuffs, then production methods have to reflect that.
Now the big chains are desperately trying to find pure,
untainted food sources - Brazil and the former Yugoslavia
have been mentioned. The moral is obvious for
commercially minded farmers and for the Government,
which is conducting non-commercial trials of GM crops
over the next three years: we don't want GM products and
we won't buy them.
BUT before we can walk away from genetically modified
produce, we have to know they're there. Jeff Rooker's
announcement, on behalf of the Government, that
restaurants and cafes will have to designate GM elements
in their dishes, is profoundly important in making that
possible, however unenforceable and clumsy the measure
sounds.
It doesn't take much imagi-nation to see what follows: no
one normal, unless they're the Prime Minister, is going to
touch a sausage roll with its GM soya content advertised.
It's not, as they say, a selling point. American trade
negotiators want Monsanto soya exports from the US not
to be labelled, precisely because they worry about
adverse consumer reaction,
but the battle against them is now half-won.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this stubborn
exercise of consumer preferences is how much it wasn't
determined from above. Mr Blair's famous sense for the
instincts of Middle England failed him badly here. Terribly
excitedly, he harangued us about how genetic technology
was the way ahead, the equivalent of the computer
revolution in this decade.
It was a real boy's view: over-excitement about a scientific
development on the grounds that it is new. Mr Blair is a
sucker for anything which can be perceived as modern -
remember his squeaky enthusiasm for getting schools on
the Information SuperHighway. But however much the
Prime Minister assured us that he and Cherie and the
children would be eating genetically modified food
regardless of any old scares, we were unimpressed.
People read the papers, took note of the television news,
and for multifarious reasons, they decided that they
weren't buying it. Cabinet ministers lined up on television
to support the view that the debate as it was conducted,
was hysterical, ill-informed, partial and girly. It didn't
matter. We listened and then we went and exercised our
inalienable consumer right not to touch the stuff.
This development - purse power - (market forces is too
ungendered a word for it) could, of course, go much
further. Monsanto, the leading company in genetically
modified crop research and development, is in trouble on
another front in the ethical food debate. A British scientist
has condemned its use of BST, a synthetically reproduced
cattle hormone which stimulates cows to produce more
milk, as a cause of animal health problems. If milk cartons
were labelled as containing the produce of artificial
hormones, just how many people do you suppose would
buy them?
Of course, there are other ways in which we could
conduct the arguments about food production and labelling
than simply boycotting those products we don't like, and
pointedly buying organic (another girl-dominated
consumer trend) instead.
What is absolutely certain is that the British political system
is too clumsy to reflect people's prejudices and passions
about issues like this, which simply don't register in
party-political terms. In Switzerland, where they hold
referendums about everything, they had a vote on
genetically modified produce. The result bucked the trend:
the Swiss decided in favour of the Monsanto argument,
but at least they had the chance to discuss the matter
rationally, and then to vote on it. Here, people are
expected to express their feelings in a single vote in a
general election.
IF THIS expression of public sentiment about food has a
moral, it is that there have to be better ways in a
democracy for people to express their opinions about
important individual issues. The Labour Party is, famously,
conducting a poll to find out what women want from
politicians.
What if it turns out that women feel exceptionally strongly
about food which damages wildlife, promotes the use of
damaging pesticides and may have damaging effects on
human health? Then what?
But for the moment, it's good enough that individual
shoppers have got the big boys, the global conglomerates ,
the party politicians, on the run. Well done, girls.
© Associated Newspapers Ltd., 19 March 1999
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