Groceries in the News

It makes us feel bad to feel good about this but...

"The increased use of genetically modified soybean crops is causing some weeds to develop resistance to one of the world's leading herbicides. Weeds resistant to Monsanto's 'Roundup' are emerging in Delaware, Maryland, California and in several Midwestern states." -New York Times 1/14/03

Editor's note: Just to be clear, "Roundup Ready" soybeans are a Monsanto product which allows farmers to drench their fields in Roundup herbicide to kill weeds without killing the soybeans. Apparently this has backfired on Monsanto, since the soybeans are passing on their resistance to the weeds that grow around them. And we thought that genetically modified crops were only going to threaten organic farming!

And some people think the Wedge is big! From the Supermarket NewsDaily Update, 1/13/03:

NEW YORK (January 13, 2003) - Non-conventional food retailers such as Wal-Mart Supercenters, Costco Wholesale Corp., Sam's Clubs, BJ's Wholesale Club and 7-Eleven continued to grab a bigger slice of the food-retailing pie last year and represented a quarter of the total $729 billion in food sales, according to SN's 2003 Top 75 listing and analysis of food retailers.

The following alternative retailers were on the move last year. Wal-Mart Supercenters held onto the No. 1 position with $95 billion in total sales of which food represented about 30%. Costco moved up to No. 3 from 5, ahead of Albertsons and Safeway. Convenience chain 7-Eleven went from No. 17 to 16 on the list. BJ's rose from No. 21 to 19 and Super Target jumped to the No. 22 position, up from 33. This demonstrated that alternative distribution channels are a force to be reckoned with, and the economic slowdown has contributed to their appeal, according to analysts interviewed by SN.

And we feel really bad about this, but, we told them so- From Norfolk Genetic Information Network (NGIN - Norfolk, UK)

"Evidence has emerged from the UK government's GM crop trials of widespread gene flow between GM crops and non-GM crops, and between GM crops and wild relatives. The investigation, conducted between 1994 and 2000 by the National Institute of Agricultural Botany and the Laboratory of the Government Chemist, indicates that GM oilseed rape (canola oil) cannot be grown in the UK without massively contaminating non-GM and organic rape."

DEFRA, the UK government's department of the environment, farming and rural affairs, tried to "bury" the findings by publishing only a brief summary on their website on Christmas Eve.

An article in The Independent on Sunday reported: "Alarming new results from official British trials of GM crops are severely jeopardizing plans for growing them commercially. The findings - in a new government report - show, for the first time in Britain, that genes from GM crops are interbreeding on a large scale with conventional ones, and with weeds.

The study is so devastating to the Government's case for GM crops that by publishing the first information on it on Christmas Eve, that is the one day in the year when no newspapers are being prepared. Even then it only produced a heavily edited summary of the main report. Unusually, the full report, which will contain much more devastating detail, was withheld from publication on the website.

The department said that it was available on request, but when The Independent on Sunday tried to ask for it last week, the department said that "no one was available to provide it."

Links to download the full report have subsequently been made available: http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/gm/research/epg-1-5-84.htm

And From that Corporation that Tries to Pass Itself Off as Your Friendly Neighborhood Natural Food Store-

AUSTIN, Texas, December 16 Whole Foods Market, Inc. (NASDAQ: WFMI), the world's largest natural and organic foods supermarket, today announced the company would be added to the NASDAQ-100 Index(R) effective December 23, 2002.