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- BRUSSELS, Dec 15 (Reuters) - Consumers may have to pay a premium if they
want their food guaranteed free of genetic modification, French seed producer
Limagrain said on Tuesday.
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- "If manufacturers want to develop
food that is not genetically modified, they will have to put in place
segregation procedures and practices. That will cost money and the cost
will probably be reflected in the price," Limagrain's Sophia Ben Tahar
told Reuters.
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- Limagrain announced on Tuesday it intended
to set up by mid-1999 segregated streams for its traditional and gene-altered
varieties of maize, soybeans, oilseed rape and other crops.
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- Ben Tahar said the move was in response
to concerns, albeit unfounded, about the safety of genetically modified
(GM) crops among consumers in Europe, where segregation has become a highly
sensitive issue.
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- European consumer and environment groups
say shoppers no longer have any choice over what they eat because growers
and food manufacturers are not prepared to separate GM and traditional
foodstuffs from field to table.
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- But much of the food industry, including
U.S. growers who export large quantities of genetically modified soybean
and corn to Europe, argue segregation will prove too costly.
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- Ben Tahar said segregation was fairly
straightforward for seed producers like Limagrain. But it would be more
complicated further down the food chain, such as in processing plants.
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- "Either they will have to double
their facilities or, if it's economically feasible, they could clean their
machinery and trucks between processing. But that (cleaning) is only feasible
for small companies," she said.
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- The European consumers' association BEUC
said it welcomed Limagrain's decision to segregate.
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- But BEUC's Joanna Dober said warnings
about possible food price rises were "a spurious argument" used
by the biotechnology industry to deny consumers the right to choose.
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- "Higher prices are wholly unjustified.
If some companies do start charging higher prices for non-GM foods, it's
a deliberate ploy to squeeze the sector," Dober told Reuters.
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- Dober said food manufacturers would not
need to set up parallel processing chains to keep gene-changed and traditional
foodstuffs apart. Cleaning machinery between batches was sufficient and
was a procedure they were already obliged to follow under current food
hygiene regulations.
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- She pointed to British retailer Iceland,
the first major retailer to segregate its source material, which said in
April sticking to non-GM foodstuffs made good commercial sense. "The
company's doing massively well financially," Dober said.
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