Food producers must put health and safety first
Things have come to a pretty pass in the Government's understanding of how the public perceive food. This time it's over genetically modified fruit and vegetables.
Demands for a ban on sales of these products are curtly rejected by spineless ministers. The only sop that consumers are given is that Tony Blair's (oh-so-trustworthy) Government will keep a wary eye on any new products.
Its own health adviser cites the disturbing fact that puréed modified tomatoes consistently outsell the non-modified variety.
Is it not strange, then, that while foods that have had their genes tampered with are banned from House of Commons canteens, our suppliers' warehouses and supermarket shelves can legitimately stock such products?
At least some politicians are rightly concerned. They believe that "consumers have a basic right to know that what they are eating is safe".
We in the restaurant business should be the first to be making noises about it and curbing the use of genetically modified foods.
Genetic engineering in-volves transferring genes from one organism to another, thereby altering the DNA of the host organism. For example, an "anti-freeze" gene that allows fish to survive freezing water has been inserted into a tomato to make it frost-resistant.
The health effects of eating genetically engineered foodstuffs are as yet unknown. Do we really want ourselves and our customers to consume these products and wait and see?
Recently a soya bean containing genetic material from a brazil nut caused reactions in individuals allergic to nuts. Austria and Luxembourg are resisting the import of genetically engineered maize that contains an antibiotic resistance gene. These countries are concerned that consumption of the maize will lead to an increased resistance to antibiotics in humans and animals.
The multinational company powering the growth of genetically modified food, Monsanto, is now estimated to be worth £22b - a six fold rise in five years - and is edging closer to controlling the whole food chain.
The company now even owns the patented genes to develop new seed varieties resistant to herbicides and insects. Recent acquisitions have enabled it to gain a stake in every stage of food production from the farmer to the marketplace.
Influential caterers must start to worry. If companies such as Monsanto are not controlled now, then the free supply of food could be threatened because these new food power-brokers will be able to control who can grow what.
Sceptical British
Luckily, and somewhat ironically, it is the sceptical British consumer who is the biggest spanner in the works for Monsanto.
The irony is that the company believes the problem - unique to the UK - arises because the institutions the Government has established to check safety are not trusted. And it is right.
When Peter Mandelson, the man whose enormous cabinet brief at the Department of Trade and Industry now includes responsibility for science, was asked whether he would eat a pizza with a topping of genetically modified tomatoes all he could say was: "The truth is, if it ended up on that pizza on that plate in front of me I would have to assume that it had passed the required food safety test and met acceptance of those who know more about these matters than I do."
Well, perhaps he should remember those people of Lanarkshire who died assuming that the food they had eaten "had passed the required food safety tests and met acceptance of those who know more about these matters".
Admittedly, these people were killed by a particularly nasty form of food poisoning - E coli - when John Major's government was still in power. But the allegations were that the Ministry of Agriculture had suppressed the damning report by its own hygiene inspectors warning that abattoirs were becoming breeding grounds for E coli.
In 1997 - when the then two-year-old report was leaked to the Financial Times - the ministry admitted it had not been published formally but had been circulated to the meat industry and was available to "members of the public who telephoned the Meat Hygiene Service".
The lesson to be learned is surely that government regulation is not enough. If we want our own food businesses to thrive we have a duty to halt the genetic altering of products ourselves.
Sustainable, environmentally friendly farming has got to be far better for all of our health and employment prospects.
