Monsanto drops plans for GM wheat
Wheat is easily identifiable with particular foods, like bread
The world's first genetically modified wheat is to be shelved because of consumer resistance.
US agri-chemical company Monsanto has announced that it would not try to market a strain it has developed called Roundup Ready.
The company has already engineered the strain to survive its own Roundup brand of weedkiller.
But there has been commercial resistance to the product from farmers around the world.
Emotive foods
They believe that wheat is too close to an obvious food like bread to be genetically modified and sold easily.
Foreign buyers, including Japan, the main purchaser of US wheat, say they are unwilling to buy the GM crop.
Accordingly, Monsanto has decided not to press ahead with its plans to sell the strain.
It "does not have a strategic fit with our overall strategy", Monsanto's northern Europe manager, Jeff Cox, told the BBC.
This is a bitter defeat for Monsanto, and it's a well-deserved victory for consumers
Ronnie Cummins
US Organic Consumers' Association
Instead, the company will concentrate on genetically engineered soya beans and corn, which can be used for animal feeds or for oil - products not so emotive or so immediately identifiable with a particular human food.
Anti-GM campaigners were jubilant at the news.
"This is a bitter defeat for Monsanto, and it's a well-deserved victory for consumers and farmers around the world, especially in north America," Ronnie Cummins, national director of the US Organic Consumers' Association, told the BBC.
"I think it marks the beginning of the end of genetically engineered crops as a major force in global agriculture," he said.
It is not the first time that Monsanto has backed away from marketing a genetically modified food.
It planned to engineer bug-resistant potatoes but came up against opposition from fast-food companies that did not want to get involved in the controversy.
The company also announced plans to close or sell facilities across Europe last October to cut costs.
The centres that were being sold or closed down had been working on conventional crop types, not GM materials.
Wheat is easily identifiable with particular foods, like bread
The world's first genetically modified wheat is to be shelved because of consumer resistance.
US agri-chemical company Monsanto has announced that it would not try to market a strain it has developed called Roundup Ready.
The company has already engineered the strain to survive its own Roundup brand of weedkiller.
But there has been commercial resistance to the product from farmers around the world.
Emotive foods
They believe that wheat is too close to an obvious food like bread to be genetically modified and sold easily.
Foreign buyers, including Japan, the main purchaser of US wheat, say they are unwilling to buy the GM crop.
Accordingly, Monsanto has decided not to press ahead with its plans to sell the strain.
It "does not have a strategic fit with our overall strategy", Monsanto's northern Europe manager, Jeff Cox, told the BBC.
This is a bitter defeat for Monsanto, and it's a well-deserved victory for consumers
Ronnie Cummins
US Organic Consumers' Association
Instead, the company will concentrate on genetically engineered soya beans and corn, which can be used for animal feeds or for oil - products not so emotive or so immediately identifiable with a particular human food.
Anti-GM campaigners were jubilant at the news.
"This is a bitter defeat for Monsanto, and it's a well-deserved victory for consumers and farmers around the world, especially in north America," Ronnie Cummins, national director of the US Organic Consumers' Association, told the BBC.
"I think it marks the beginning of the end of genetically engineered crops as a major force in global agriculture," he said.
It is not the first time that Monsanto has backed away from marketing a genetically modified food.
It planned to engineer bug-resistant potatoes but came up against opposition from fast-food companies that did not want to get involved in the controversy.
The company also announced plans to close or sell facilities across Europe last October to cut costs.
The centres that were being sold or closed down had been working on conventional crop types, not GM materials.
Comments
Hide the following 2 comments
Oxford involvement
11.05.2004 19:32
sociétélibre / imc-oxford-features list
More on Monsanto
12.05.2004 10:50
By Tom Whitehead and Andrew Woodcock, PA News
Anti-GM campaigners today heralded the decision by biotechnology giant Monsanto to suspend a genetically-modified wheat as a “major milestone” and “worldwide victory”.
The American company announced it was deferring efforts to introduce Roundup Ready wheat, which is modified to be resistant to a widely-used weedkiller, to concentrate research on GM corn, cotton and oilseeds.
The move was seized on by environmentalists as a key defeat for the firm in the fight to stop GM crops.
Ex-environment minister Michael Meacher said: “Obviously, the withdrawal of Roundup Ready wheat is a major defeat for Monsanto.
“It has put a lot of resources and effort and determination into trying to get countries to accept Roundup Ready wheat and that would have been a big bonanza for Monsanto.
“They have clearly failed because there is such strong resistance. This is a major milestone in the decline of Monsanto, which is now being confined to much narrower areas.”
Kathryn Tulip, of the Green Gloves Pledge, a group whose supporters remove crops from the ground, said: “This is another nail in the coffin of GM and shows the power of people standing up and saying we do not what this technology and are not happy with it.”
Monsanto, the world’s biggest supplier of GM crops, has failed over the past six years to gain European Union approval for the cultivation of Roundup Ready wheat in Europe.
It signalled it was dropping efforts to introduce GM wheat in Europe last year when it put its cereals division up for sale.
Ben Ayliffe, of Greenpeace, said: “GM wheat was meant to be Monsanto’s next big thing, but like most other GM crops it looks destined for the scrapheap.
“Monsanto failed to convince even the most die-hard GM supporters that GM wheat was worth the risk.”
Pete Riley, of Friends of the Earth, said: “This is a worldwide victory for consumers and farmers.
“Virtually every major wheat-user in the world rejected this product before it was even allowed on the market.
“This is another major financial blow to Monsanto. It should now pull out of this discredited business once and for all.”
Monsanto executive vice president Carl Casale said yesterday the business opportunities for Roundup Ready wheat were “less attractive” than other commercial priorities.
But he stressed: “We will continue to monitor the wheat industry’s desire for crop improvements, via breeding and biotechnology, to determine if and when it might be practical to move forward with a biotech wheat product.
“This decision allows us to defer commercial development of Roundup Ready wheat in order to align with the potential commercialisation of other biotechnology traits in wheat, estimated to be four to eight years in the future.”
crop geek