Think global, eat local, says German farm minister
Europe must protect itself from the threat of genetically modified crops coming from the United States, German farm minister Renate Kuenast said in a newspaper article on the World Consumer Rights Day on Thursday.
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Subject: Think global, eat local, says German farm minister
Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 07:41:28 -0500
From: Stephen Tvedten <steve@getipm.com>
Organization: Get Set Inc. (www.getipm.com)
To: Paul Helliker <phelliker@cdpr.ca.gov>
Director, State
of California, Department of Pesticide Regulation
cc: Christine Whitman whitman.christine@epa.gov
Dear Mr. Helliker, I thought
you might like to read the following article:
Think global, eat local, says German farm minister
HAMBURG, March 15 (Reuters) - Europe must protect itself from the threat of genetically modified crops coming from the United States, German farm minister Renate Kuenast said in a newspaper article on the World Consumer Rights Day on Thursday.
``While the U.S. grows genetically modified crops on near 30 million hectares, uses artificial hormones in cattle feed and performance-boosters in milk output, we in Europe oppose these on grounds of preventive consumer protection,'' Kuenast said.
Kuenast, a co-leader of Germany's ecologist Green party and farm minister in Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrat-Green cabinet since January, wrote a full-page article in Germany's conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
The article, quoting thinkers and politicians from 18th century economist Adam Smith to former U.S. President John F. Kennedy, lashed out against falling quality standards in the food industry but also at consumers willing to accept those.
Kuenast, whose portfolio was renamed to Ministry for Consumer Protection, Food and Agriculture in the wake of the mad cow crisis which erupted in Germany last November, gave the most comprehensive account to date of her goals and beliefs.
She saw the two animal disease crises of mad cow and foot-and-mouth now engulfing Europe as a chance to steer away from industrial food production and promote more ecological, animal-friendly and sustainable farming.
``(The BSE crisis) marked not only the end of the post-war farm policy, but also raised consumer protection to the rank of of a prominent domestic policy issue,'' she said. Kuenast plans to lead the European Union's biggest farm industry towards ``class instead of mass,'' as she outlined last month when presenting her farm policy reform, and is ready to fight for an overhaul of the EU's commmon agricultural policy.
``The growing value of consumer protection could help Europeans see their continent as the Europe of the people,'' she said, warning that the same people, foremost the Germans, must accept the higher price of increased safety and better quality.
``A four-person (German) household spent 45 percent of its income on food in 1950, now it is only 15 percent,'' she said. ``Even food retailers admit that that led to a fall in quality.''
She also said that the majority of European consumers opposed genetically modified crops, and a large-scale introduction of those would leave no choice to the continent.
``The
interaction between genetically modified plants and the domestic flora are
inevitable and irreversible,'' Kuenast said. ``That would in fact take away the
possibility of free choice.''
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Well Mr. Helliker, how does it make you feel knowing that Europe feels that it must protect itself from the threat of genetically modified crops coming from the United States? The price of U.S. corn has fallen to its lowest level in 18 years! You have put our nation's farmers on a chemical and genetically modified treadmill that is bankrupting them! There are safe and far more effective alternatives that can actually solve pest problems without CONTAMINATING the natural food and the environment -- when will it be "legal" (in your opinion) to use them?
Respectfully, Stephen L. Tvedten