Leading chefs have pledged to ban GE ingredients from their cuisine. Farmers are suing the Monsanto for monopolizing seed. Some anonymous activists have even sabotaged crops, in what remains the most controversial tactic to date. And shareholder activism is heating up. The Safeway measure is just one of twenty two such resolutions introduced this spring by shareholders of a number of major food manufacturers and distributors, from Coca Cola to Kellogg.
Activist concerns vary.
Some emphasize the growing corporate control of agriculture and the global food system, while others raise the issue of unknown long term health effects of new technology. Still others are alarmed by environmental dangers such as the creation of super weeds and the destruction of non-target species like the monarch butterfly. For some it means organic farming, for others it means protecting the local family farm. For still others it means promoting farmers' markets and making healthy, affordable food available to inner city consumers. In communities from Berkeley, Petaluma and Sebastopol, California to five townships in Pennsylvania to the City of Boston, Massachusetts coalitions of parents, farmers and environmentalists have gotten local legislators to pass an array of anti-biotech resolutions.