From: Jim.Thomas@uk.greenpeace.org (Jim Thomas)

Subject: biggest Austrian dairy company goes GE-free!!!!

Dear all,

this is to inform you of another milestone achievement of the Austrain GE campaign.

The Austria's biggest dairy company (products: milk, cheese, yoghurts and any other milk-based product you can think of) is announcing TODAY that it has a GE-free policy, that it is basically today GE-free and plans to stay GE-free in the future.

The company called Berglandmilch (which roughly translates to mountain milk) has a market share of 50 %(!) in Austria and also exports some of their production to other European countries (in particular Germany but also Spain, Switzerland, Italy etc.)

It uses two brand names "Schaerdinger" and "Desserta" on their dairy products. (The company name "Berglandmilch " is never used.)

We have been working with this company for some weeks (to check their product line!) and have an excellent insight into ALL their product compositions. In a stunning way Berglandmilch has given us ANY insight in their product quality management we asked for (I have NOT seen anything like that in the six years I worked for GP).

GE-free, what does this mean in this case:

Berglandmilch uses it in the most stringent way there is:

1. No animal feed containing GE-components (no ge-soy, no ge-produced vitamins (f.e. B12), no GE-produced enzymes, NO GE-produced additives)
2. no GE-enzymes in their products (f.e. NO GE-chymosin (cheese-enzyme) in any of their products)
3. no living GMOs in their dairy products (f.e. for cheese, joghurts, etc.)
4. no GE-produced food additives in their products (f.e. no artificial flavours, vitamines, modified starches, enzymes, etc.)

They also have a very tight quality managment programm to check their committment in the future

Initially Berglandmilch discussed a more planned release of their GE-free policy but due to massive political interventions and lobbying to STOP them there plans changed practically several times a day for the last three weeks.

Yesterday at a totally different press conference their chair of the board "leaked" their plans (nobody knows why) and today they'll go out big.

We'll "congratulated" them on their decision.

This message is to give you the first background info so you can think WHEN and HOW they can use this info (which I don't think is the big news story outside Austria TODAY) but definitely an excellent lobby tool (both politically and for market work) in many countries for the days and weeks to come.

Berglandmilch (turnover about 800 million US$) is - to my knowledge - the first big(ger) company that kicked out all GE-realted products out of a pretty big product range. They therefore show that what we say - we have to and can live without GE-stuff - is possible.

And we can safely use this example as we had all the insight and we can clearly say Berglandmilch is firmly committed to this GE-policy and has implemented it by 98% today. One of the small exceptions are f.e. the about 10-20% of their milk farmers (40 000 in number) which use soy-based feed (which can contain GE-soy today). The remaining 80-90% does NOT use soy at all (but grass!!)

But within the next weeks they'll have changed from soy to a a special milk cow feed mix of beans and peas (as a protein alternative to soy).

For further questions please call me, Wolfgang Pekny, Alexander Egit or our press officer Florian Faber at the GP Austria office

GE.-free regards from Austria,

Thomas

Thomas Belazzi

Greenpeace Austria

tel: +43-1-713 00 31

FAX: +43-1-713 00 30

email: Thomas.Belazzi@mail.at.gl3 (please use both

email: Thomas.Belazzi@at.greenpeace.org addresses)

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