- MANY OF Britain's leading chefs have agreed to banish genetically
modified food from their kitchens and press the Government for a five-year
moratorium on such foods being sold in shops.
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- Nico Ladenis and Raymond Blanc are among
the 19 chefs who have agreed to back a Friends of the Earth campaign to
halt the sale of genetically engineered food until more is known about
its impact on health and the environment.
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- Pete Riley, a campaigner at FoE, said
the people who cared most about food were nearly unanimous in their disapproval
of scientific tinkering.
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- Shaun Hill, the chef and proprietor of
the Merchant House restaurant in Ludlow, Shropshire, said: "It is
the same sets of voices who gave us battery chickens in the name of cheap
food that are now pushing genetic engineering. I'm very suspicious of their
motives.
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- "There are just too many question
marks hanging over this new technology. It is about time the Government
learnt from the mistakes of the past and stopped people messing about
with our food."
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- All the chefs who agreed to back the
FoE campaign presided over restaurants who won the highest rating in this
year's Good Food Guide.
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- Among them was Waldow's, the restaurant
at Cliveden, the stately home in Berkshire once owned by Waldorf Astor.
Ian Samson, head chef at the adjoining Terrace restaurant, said the introduction
of genetically modified food was a "frightening prospect" as
the safety of the technology was unproven.
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- The Good Food Guide's editor, Jim Ainsworth,
said: "To introduce 'experimental' herbicide-resistant, genetically
modified, crops without some soundly based assurance is madness, albeit
perfectly legal madness. If BSE has taught us anything, it is surely to
be cautious about tampering with natural processes, however well intentioned,
however plausibly the benefits are packaged."
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- Philip Howard, the head chef at The Square
restaurant in London, agreed. "It is only now that we are beginning
to realise how using steroids, growth promoters and antibiotics has trashed
the flavour of what we eat," he said.
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- Although genetically modified crops are
not yet being grown commercially in the UK, such food is being sold in
the high street shops and supermarkets. Safeway and Sainsbury's sell puree
made from modified tomatoes grown in North America, said Mr Riley.
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- The alteration of foodstuffs and additives
such as lecithin, a soya by-product which is used as an emulsifier in ice-cream
and chocolate, was very difficult to detect, he added. Current legislation
does not require manufacturers to label those products that contained certain
modified ingredients.
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- It was ironic that the restaurants in
the House of Commons had banned genetically modified food, yet the Government
were still allowing it to be sold to the public, Mr Riley said.
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