The Monthly Comment

In our first monthly comment, Jóhannes Gunnarsson, Chairman of the Icelandic Consumers´ Association, discusses the World Consumer Rights Day celebrated worldwide on March the 15th 2005 and explains why it is devoted to consumers´ opposition to GMOs.

For several years The Icelandic Consumers´ Association (ICA) has covered the GM issue in its magazine, the Consumers´ Journal. In one of its articles there was a call for a moratorium on GM pharm(medicine) crop trials in the open Icelandic environment, stressing that until independent assessments on the environmental and health risks associated with GM crop production had been conducted, it was unsafe to proceed with further trials. In 2004, the ICA assembly passed a resolution demanding increased caution in the handling of GMOs and called for the labelling of GM foods. That same year Icelandic Consumers Association co-founded, together with four other national organisations, an information campaign which has produced this website - intended to impart a large body of information on Gmo’s and GM technology to the layman.  The ICA has also held a successful conference on GM technology at which a visiting lecturer talked about the risks of GM food and medicine crops.

 

Through these projects the ICA hopes to increase public awareness about the massive risks some leading figures in the Icelandic agriculture sector appear to be prepared to take when they promote the growing of GM medicine crops on thousands of hectares of Icelandic land.

 

The ICA has been criticised for its precautionary stance on GMO´s by the Icelandic Biotech company and its supporters in the agricultural establishment – even though it is understood that consumer confidence in Icelandic farm products is a precondition for the survival of agriculture in this country.  Domestic and foreign consumers will lose trust in Icelandic agricultural products if the ecosystem, human health and the rights of consumers to buy non-GM food are not protected.

 

It is encouraging to see that the position taken on GMO’s by the Icelandic Consumers´ Association is fully supported by the 6 billion consumers represented by Consumers International.  Their message is clear – on World Consumer Rights Day, March 15 2005, “Consumers Say No to GMO’S”.

 

Consumers International has devoted the World Consumers Rights Day to the issue of GMO’S because worldwide public opposition to GM food and crops has not only increased but intensified. Consumers want the growing of GM crops stopped until GM food and medicine crops can be proven beneficial beyond doubt to consumers, farmers and the environment.

 

Consumers International goes further by demanding that governments protect non-GM production and allow the creation of GM-free areas, which continue to grow throughout Europe and are now appearing in the USA. The CI has also raised warnings about misleading claims made by biotech companies regarding purported benefits of GMOs to farmers and the environment.

 

The consumers´ main priority is safe food.  They perceive that GM food constitutes a risk because it contains genes that have never been part of the human diet, and therefore has the potential to cause damage to the digestive system and general health. Consumers want ‘freedom of choice’ when buying food and feel genetically modified foods should be labelled. They also wish to have access to objective information on the long term health and environmental effects of GM.

The Icelandic Consumers´ Association will continue to defend and promote the basic rights of consumers and to encourage Icelandic farmers and food producers to support them in their efforts towards this end.

 

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