CZECH  PROTESTS  AGAINST  TESCOS'  GM  FOOD

ngin comment:  Of course, the citizens of this former totalitarian state are well off in comparison with those in the land of the free.
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GREENPEACE PROTESTS AGAINST TESCOS GM FOOD
PRAGUE, March 8 - CTK National News Wire,

Greenpeace activists pasted posters reading "Tesco is feeding us with what they don't even want to give to livestock in England" and a picture of Tesco's Czech branch general director onto the shop windows of the Tesco store at Narodni street in Prague today.

By [using] the posters, which were immediately removed by Tesco employees, the environmental activists wanted to point to a double policy applied by Tesco which pledged not to sell genetically modified food in Britain but continues selling it in the Czech Republic.

Tesco's local media spokesman Jozef Bednar said earlier that in the Czech Republic the store chain supported proper labelling of products containing genetically modified organisms, and he went on to claim that Tesco was currently preparing a series of new products respecting demands for the production of food without genetic modifications.

Bednar claimed additionally that the store chain was prepared to comply with a new Czech law requiring labelling of genetically modified food products, but his statement disclosed, nevertheless, that the store chain would only do so after this new law officially becomes valid as of January 1,
2002.

This however does not satisfy Greenpeace. In Britain, unlike in the Czech Republic, Tesco guarantees its customers that not a single one of the products it sells contains anything genetically modified whatsoever.

In January, Tesco also promised in England that all of its own meat and also dairy products would be produced from animals fed exclusively with feed containing absolutely no genetically modified ingredients.

Greenpeace is convinced that genetically modified foods pose a yet unclear risk to the environment and to people's health. In its campaigns, it has called for guarantees of consumers' rights to know exactly what is being offered to them and whether a product is genetically modified before they decide whether or not to buy it.