[Imc] Great GMO news!

[Peter Miller]

This AP story appeared in the Nov. 28 News-Gazette, page C6:

MONSANTO ACTS AMID CONCERNS OVER BIOTECH

Washington - Amid growing uneasiness about genetically engineered crops, a major biotechnology company announced Monday it would restrict plantings next year of a type of gene-altered corn and delay commercialization of another variety until 2002.
     The moves by the Monsanto Co. are meant to avoid upsetting export markets for U.S. corn and repeating the problems encountered this fall when biotech corn developed by one of its competitors appeared in the food supply without being approved for human consumption.
     "We can't stop the development of this technology, but we are going to use restraint," said Hendrik Verfaillie, Monsanto's president.
     A variety of corn developed by Monsanto to be resistant to the company's popular Roundup weedkiller will be distributed for sale next year only to farmers in areas where grain is seldom sold for export, Verfaillie said.  The corn is approved for food use in both the United States and Japan but not in Euorpe.  Traces of the corn were found this fall in British-made tortilla chips.


The GMO juggernaut has been turned back by European activists and by the the little non-governmental organization that decided to start testing corn products and found that GMO corn had infected far more of our food than the corporations were admitting.  Who would have thought that a small group of people could force the president of Monsanto to make such a presentation?

Keep up the great work, everyone!

-Peter