Action Alert: White sugar now coming from genetically modified sugar beets!
October 7, 2008 - This year saw the first commercial planting of genetically modified (GM) sugar beets in the United States, with that sugar to hit the food supply soon after.
Farmers across the country will soon be planting Monsanto's Roundup Ready sugar beet, genetically engineered for resistance to Monsanto's herbicide glyphosate (marketed as Roundup). John Schorr, agriculture manager for Amalgamated Sugar, estimates that 95 percent of the sugar beet crop in Idaho will be of the new GM variety in 2008, or a total of 150,000 out of 167,000 acres.
Approximately 1.4 million acres of sugar beets are planted in the United States each year, primarily in Minnesota and North Dakota's Red River Valley, as well as the Pacific Northwest, Great Plains and Great Lakes areas.
In response to the anticipated flood of GM sugar onto the food market, the consumer group Citizens for Health has launched an email campaign to pressure three major sugar and candy companies to refuse the new product. In 2001, American Crystal Sugar, Hershey's and M&M Mars all promised that they would not use GM sugar; Citizens for Health is asking consumers to email those companies from the group's Web site and urge them to keep that promise.
"Since half of the granulated sugar in the U.S. comes from sugar beets, the infiltration of GE sugar beets represents a significant alteration of our food supply," Citizens for Health says on its Web site. "Unlike traditional breeding, genetic engineering creates new life forms that would never occur in nature, (thereby) creating new and unpredictable health and environmental risks."
Contact these companies and tell them you will not buy their products if they use genetically modified sugar.
American Crystal Sugar
218-236-4400
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Hershey's
800-464-1714
M&M Mars
800-627-7852
