Anyone who thinks GM cotton ain't a food issue needs to look at item 2. Needless to say, regulatory authorities rarely have looked at it as a food issue, but Food Standards Australia New Zealand are quite happy to see it go *unlabelled* into food.

For how to e-mail the NZ government to urge them to stop their support for terminator seeds:
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4890

For more information see: NZ Govt. Caught In Secret Deal on Terminator Genes
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/SC0502/S00036.htm

1.Poultry giants quail at gene food protests
2.GM cotton for use unlabelled in Oz and NZ foods
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1.Poultry giants quail at gene food protests
By Kirsty Needham, Consumer Reporter
Sidney Morning Herald, February 11, 2005
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Poultry-giants-quail-at-gene-food-protests/2005/02/10/1107890350200.html

A consumer backlash against genetically engineered food has prompted the three largest poultry companies, which produce 80 per cent of chicken sold in Australia, to stop using GE feed.

Inghams, Bartter Steggles and Baiada are expected to announce today that they will phase out the use of imported genetically engineered soy. The decision has been described by Greenpeace as "a major win for consumer power", and follows thousands of phone calls, faxes and letters to the poultry companies.

A Greenpeace campaigner, John Hepburn, said the importation of 300,000 tonnes of genetically engineered soy by poultry companies was "the biggest single source of GE contamination of the Australian food chain".

"The poultry industry is to be congratulated for responding to public concerns," he said.

Under the Food Code, poultry fed with genetically engineered soy does not have to be labelled as such.

But the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission ruled in December that it was misleading for companies to label the same poultry as "GE free" or "not genetically modified", and told them to change their packaging.

Mr Hepburn said the commission decision's had "put quite a lot of extra pressure" on the chicken companies, but the catalyst for the move to non-genetically engineered feed was the consumer backlash.

Nutritionist Dr Rosemary Stanton said it was "good news to find the poultry industry was responding to concerns raised by consumers, public health and environment advocates".

In September the Food Standards chief executive, Graham Peachey, told a food industry conference that genetic engineering had failed to capture public interest, and a government survey of consumer attitudes showed half of those surveyed did not want to eat it.
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2.GE cotton for use in NZ foods
NZPA, 10 February 2005
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3183785a7693,00.html

The trans-Tasman food standards authority says it is safe to eat foods containing ingredients made from some genetically engineered (GE) cotton.

Food Standards Australia New Zealand today announced it is seeking public submissions, by March 23, on the use in foods of GE cotton from the Monsanto strain MON88913, which has been engineered to tolerate glyphosate herbicides, such as the company's Roundup.

At the end of last year, Food Standards' managing director, Ian Lindenmayer announced the approval of foods made using oil and "linters" from Syngenta's GE cotton, COT102, commercially known as Bollgard II.

That GE cultivar is engineered with a gene codes to produce a bacterial toxin, Bt, to kill cotton bollworm and budworm.

It was the 20th GE food ingredient to be approved for sale by Food Standards, which said that foods containing oil and linters from the GE cotton would be exempt from GE labelling requirements, because those two parts of the cotton did not contain engineered proteins.

Linters are the fine, silky fibres which stick to seeds of the cotton plant and are used as cellulose content in food casings, and ice cream.

Today, Food Standards said it had also completed a draft review of foods derived from another GE cotton, MXB-13, which has been engineered to be both herbicide tolerant and insect-resistant.

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