Reading between the lines

We’re also eating GM because GM crops are fed to farm animals and at the moment there’s no law that food from animals fed on GM crops need to be labelled GM. The simplest way to be sure is to eat organic – though many of the major supermarkets are committed to removing GM.

Sometimes it’s the language that’s misleading. Visit the cooked meat counter and you will see ‘wafer thin ham’ or ‘chicken roll’. But it’s not wafer thin because they have really sharp knives, it’s all the left over bits that have been pressed in a machine, had water added to make them stick together and then sliced. And have you ever seen a chicken round enough to make a roll?

Even a simple egg is a battleground. Egg labelling is voluntary which means there is no standard labelling system. Buy a box of eggs with ‘fresh’ on it - they are almost certainly from a battery hen living in a cage the area of a telephone directory.

‘Barn eggs’ means hens must be loose in the barn with room to scratch, perch and nest but will have no access to the outside. ‘Freerange’ hens have to have daytime access to the outside but who knows what goes into their feed? Organic eggs must be from freerange hens fed with organic feed.

The solution is in our weekly shop, because the supermarkets do listen. Don’t believe anyone who tells you that the individual shopper has no power. Remember when they said that organic food would never work? Support organisations like the RSPCA and their Freedom Food range which is guaranteed to meet certain standards of care.

Oh and what should you be giving your kids if you want to make sure their teeth don’t decay? Milk or water. Incidentally, The British Dental Association decided Ribena Toothkind was the first food product they felt happy endorsing. Bizarrely they decided to re-endorse it for another three years beforethe High Court judgement. And though Ribena can no longer claim that Toothkind doesn’t encourage tooth decay – they’ve decided not to appeal the high court decision – they will still have the BDA stamp of approval on the bottle. And they can still call it Toothkind.

Useful Addresses

• www.rspca.co.uk for more information about Freedom foods and genetically modified foods, or call their enquiry line: 0870 333 5999
• www.soilassociation.org has lots of useful information about organic and what it means.
• There’s excellent information on GM foods from www.greenpeace.org.uk/Products/GM

If you want to complain, do so directly to your supermarket, firstly to the manager and then write or email their head office. All the big supermarkets are only too aware of their customer base these days.