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Biotech / Medical : Monsanto Co. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Professor Dotcomm who wrote (1845)	3/29/1999 1:27:00 PM
From: Anthony Wong	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2539

03/29 06:01 FEATURE - GM foods panic yet to hit British restaurants By Daniel Simpson LONDON, March 29 (Reuters) - Casting a wary eye over a rack of glistening fowl adorning a Chinatown restaurant window, Brian Hinton scratched his chin and gave voice to the British public's deep suspicion about what ends up on its dinner plates. "You know, I'm looking at that duck and wondering exactly what on earth it's coated in," he said with unease. When The Mirror tabloid screamed "Prime Monster" at Tony Blair in February after the Prime Minister said he was happy to eat genetically modified (GM) food, it was tapping into long-standing national anxiety about food safety. But despite a moral panic that has seen newspaper columnists and supermarket telephone advice lines twitching due to national worries about so-called "Frankenstein foods", the 68 percent of Britons who tell pollsters they are concerned about eating GM foods have been slow to ask questions of their restaurants. Under new legislation extending European Union labelling laws on GM soya and maize to include Britain's 125,000 food outlets, the government aimed this month to restore consumer confidence by ordering caterers, from hot dog stands to top restaurants, to reassure customers about what they're eating. Restaurants and cafes will face fines of up to 5,000 pounds ($8,114) after September if staff cannot tell diners whether their food contains GM ingredients when asked. A CONCERNED PUBLIC KEEPS QUIET Yet few of central London's catering establishments -- from the sandwich chains to Michelin starred restaurants -- report much evidence of serious customer concern about GM food. "I get a lot more vegetarians phoning me each week asking me about the vegetarian aspect of our menu than GM foods and I must admit I am surprised," said Robert Bird, quality control manager for the Pizza Express chain's 200 restaurants. "When it all came out on the radio and the television I thought we'd be inundated with customers asking questions, but no," he said, reporting only two queries in the past fortnight from an estimated weekly clientele of 250,000. Restaurants at the upper end of the scale are no different. "Customer-wise no, we haven't really been asked," said a spokeswoman for British style guru Terence Conran's fleet of "gastrodomes". "It's been more of a press question really." So why, when 92 percent of Britons polled by the Consumers' Association call for all ingredients from GM sources to be clearly labelled on food packaging, are diners keeping quiet? Simple, said one diner at innovative Spanish restaurant Moro. "I don't think decent restaurants use them. It's something I would worry about at a supermarket, but not at a restaurant." BRITAIN'S GM FEARS The 1,000 callers in two days to a GM foods advice line set up by supermarket chain J. Sainsbury Plc <SBRY.L> in February and its subsequent decision to set up a European supermarket consortium to ensure no GM ingredients end up in its own-label products testify to the strength of consumer feeling on GM food. Government attempts at reassurance after biochemist Arpad Pusztai published claims that laboratory rats fed on GM potatoes had suffered internal organ damage failed to placate a British public still reeling from the BSE "mad cow disease" crisis. "BSE and various other food scandals over the last 10 years have undermined people's trust in official sources of advice," said Julie Sheppard of the Consumers' Association. "The best way to have a food scare is for a food minister to stand up and say it's safe." Environmental concerns about cross pollination risks from GM crops grown by U.S. agrochemical giant Monsanto <MTC.N> and Swiss life sciences group Novartis <NOVZn.S> have added to suspicion of the two firms' new weed and insect resistant plant strains designed to increase the world's food supplies. INFORMATION GAP BREEDS CONCERN The public's general lack of understanding of the complex issues behind the "Frankenstein food" furore may have made British restaurantgoers complacent, consumer groups fear. The revelation that restaurants themselves lack information to provide the reassurance customers are increasingly expected to seek could overturn diners' reluctance to ask questions. From sandwich chain Pret a Manger through colourful Chinatown to the latest fashionable restaurants, almost all the outlets surveyed by Reuters said their food was, as far as they knew, GM free. But they couldn't always be certain. "If we are serving GMOs we're unaware of it," said Kevin Graham, general manager of Jean-Cristophe Novelli's restaurant group. "In our ignorance we can quite clearly state that we're getting locally produced veg but who knows the actual origins?" President of the Master Chefs of Great Britain and restaurateur the Earl of Bradford is worried about the onus placed on restaurants, given their dependence on wholesalers and the ingredients of ingredients used in food preparation. "I think GM food is absolutely appalling," he said. "I wouldn't want to touch it with a barge pole. "But we rely on the information that's given to us by suppliers," he added, pointing to the U.S. practice of mixing GM and natural crops at source and the impossibility of knowing whether animals have been fed GM soya or maize derivatives. "The sad reality is we are all pawns in economic and political power games," he said. Restaurants like Oliver Peyton's The Atlantic Bar and Grill, Mash and Coast, which are taking a strong line on GM foods because they see themselves catering to more discerning diners are less of an exception than they presume. "It's not just me," said one diner at classic British institution Simpson's-in-the Strand. "The man in the street doesn't want this stuff and he'll go right out of his way to avoid it. "I haven't asked a waiter about GM food myself yet, but that time will come and soon," he said. "And the minute people think about it with all this publicity, they're going to ask too." ($1=.6162 Pound)