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Chips Are Down For GM Crops

Now US farmers are turning against GM seed

1st March 2000 / Squall Download 3, March/April 2000, pg. 11.

Direct action against genetically modified crops in Britain has now creating big ripples in the United States. More than a dozen US corporations, including McDonald's and Coca-Cola, are facing a revolt from shareholders concerned about policy on GM foods.

According to The Investor Responsibility Research Centre, an independent Washington organisation which monitors corporate and shareholder behaviour, the GM issue has figured among shareholder concerns for the first time and is described as "the biggest example of social issue shareholder activism" since company boards were taken to task for their dealings with South Africa under the apartheid regime. By the time anti-GMO activism caught on in the UK, the issue was already being described as a concern "after the horse has bolted". However, US activists have picked up on the British direct action movement's stance over GM food.

According to a recent market survey, the planting of genetic crops by US farmers is set to fall for the first time since the start of the dramatic rise in 1996. The American Corn Growers Association has upheld claims by Worldwatch, an environmental group, that the global acreage of all GM crops (mainly corn and soya grown in the American midwest), is set to fall by 25% on last year's figures.