Invitation
PRESS BRIEFING
At this press briefing, US geneticist John Fagan will present a solution to the current conflict between retailers, the government, and food producers, over the genetically engineered soybean now being harvested in the USA and imported into Britain for the first time.
His solution will allow the public to choose between products that contain
genetically engineered soybeans and those which contain only natural soybeans
- something that consumers and retailers want but which they have been
told is impossible.
The problem
Reflecting the wishes of the majority of consumers, the British Retail Consortium (representing 90% of the industry) has called for all genetically engineered foods to be clearly labeled as such. However, the US biotechnology industry claims that due to the logistics of harvesting and storage the new genetically engineered soybeans will inevitably be mixed up with natural soybeans and there is no way either to separate them or to detect the difference between them. Scientific advisers to the British government claim that products derived from the two kinds of soybean are to all intents and purposes indistinguishable, and they are therefore advising that labeling of the soybeans is not necessary, to the great dissatisfaction of many retailers and consumers. The issue is causing concern because soybean products are used in as much as two-thirds of all processed foods, and there are many scientists, including Dr Fagan and Dr Antoniou, who warn of the huge potential risks of these and other genetically engineered foods.
The solution
Dr Fagan's solution is two-fold. First, he has located two soybean wholesalers in the USA who can supply the UK market with large quantities of natural soybeans that they guarantee to be free from contamination with genetically engineered soybeans. Second, in collaboration with a US company, Dr Fagan has developed a sensitive and precise assay to confirm the purity of the soybeans - a test that is capable of detecting one genetically engineered soybean in a batch of 10,000.