Vancouver kicks off GMO food awareness drive
Residents will get a chance to talk about a ‘ pretty complicated issue’
The City of Vancouver will kick off a week of events this morning for Non-GMO Awareness Week in an effort to promote better understanding of the issues raised by genetically modified organisms in our food system.
Consumers are generally wary of GMOs when asked by pollsters, but many people hold serious misconceptions about GMOs and the risks they pose, especially to the environment, said Trish Kelly, a member of the Vancouver Food Policy Council.
“People are concerned about GMOs, but they don’t necessarily have all the facts, so the attention of having the city make this proclamation — the first one in Canada — allows us to have conversations about a pretty complicated issue,” said Kelly.
The proclamation comes at the behest of the food policy council’s working group on GMOs, which was asked by city council to come up with recommendations and direction on the issue after discussions with the anti- GMO group GE Free BC.
More than a dozen municipalities in B. C. have declared their opposition to GMOs, although municipalities lack the power to ban their sale or even their cultivation. Even getting GMO foods out of city facilities and food programs has been problematic.
Vancouver has banned GMO fruit trees from parks and boulevards and discourages GMO seeds in community gardens, but procuring non- GMO foods for Park Board food outlets and meal programs is a more complex issue, said Kelly. More than 70 per cent of foods available in a typical grocery store — mainly ready- to- eat foods — contain ingredients made from GMO corn, soy, sugar beets and canola, according to the Grocery Manufacturers Association.
“We haven’t seen a commitment from the city on ( non- GMO) procurement yet,” said Kelly. “We’ve looked at local food procurement and it’s a difficult thing to do ... in most places they have said they will do it ‘ when possible.’ ”
Coun. Andrea Reimer will read the city’s proclamation at Whole Foods Market this morning.
“I think this is a great thing to promote awareness and promote this as a goal. It’s a statement that you care for citizens,” said Joe Rogoff, Whole Foods’ regional president for the Pacific Northwest. “One thing I’ve learned from state initiatives in support of GMO labelling in the U. S. is that even though people have opinions about GMOs, they aren’t all that wellinformed.”
Whole Foods has committed to GMO transparency on all its products by 2018, meaning that any food that is not certified organic or non- GMO must be labelled if it contains GMOs.
“More information is always better than less information,” he said. “Our customers continue to tell us they want to know where their food is coming from, how it’s produced, who produced it, and they want that in greater and greater detail.”
Securing products that meet those standards takes years, he said, but the message is travelling up the value chain.
He cited Burnaby- based Left Coast Naturals as the first food distributor in North America to eliminate all GMOs from its product lines by 2015.
“When farmers start to get the message from their customers that there is a market for non- GMO crops, then all those issues of supply and price will start to disappear,” Rogoff said.