Costco and GMO

Details

Published on Thursday, 12 June 2014 13:20

Written by editor

GMO salmon could be coming to your dinner table unlabeled and unregulated — unless Costco joins the grocery chains pledging to keep it from their shelves.

Tell Costco to commit to not selling GMO salmon and other seafood.

We have a plan to ensure that Canadians are not the world's guinea pigs for FrankenSalmon -- getting grocery chains like Costco to commit to keep its shelves free of GMO fish.

If an American biotech firm get their way, Canada will be the first country in the world to allow its citizens to consume GMO meat. Just last winter, Environment Canada allowed American firm Aquabounty to grow its genetically modified salmon for research purposes. And now Health Canada is considering allowing GMO salmon for human consumption, which means FrankenSalmon may soon hit a fish aisle near you.

Here's the good news -- consumer power has worked to ensure genetically modified meat stays off our shelves. More than 60 grocery retailers in North America have pledged not to sell genetically engineered salmon and seafood, and Friends of the Earth just got Safeway to commit to GMO-free meat. Costco is one of the last hold outs, and if it commits to not sell GMO-meat, it would make the government's decision null and void because there will be no stores to sell the FrankenSalmon.

Tell Costco to pledge not to sell GMO salmon or other seafood.

Nearly two million scientists, business owners and consumers in North American have voiced concerns about having GMO meat at our local grocer or seafood restaurant without being able to recognize it. It's no wonder -- some studies have shown that GMOs could be linked to organ inflammation, super-bacteria and cancer. There's still so much we don't know about foods like GMO salmon -- and until more studies are done, we need to keep it off our shelves.

Wide scale commercialization of mutant fish at stores like Costco will put our fish stock in danger. Decades of commercial fish farming have shown that no matter how salmon is raised, they will escape. And when the GMO salmon gets out in the wild, it will have considerable risks to our native fish population as well as our coastal economies.

And once GMO fish are in our grocery stores, consumers won't be able to avoid the genetically modified organism -- corporations have fought tooth and nail against GMO labelling rules, pouring millions of dollars in lobbying in recent years. This is why we need to fight to stop GMO salmon from hitting stores in the first place.

Let Costco know that we want GMO salmon off its shelves.

Thanks for all that you do,
Angus, Hanna, Kaytee, and the rest of us.

**********
More Information:

Stores say no to GMO salmon, The Los Angeles Times, 3 March 2014.
Health hazards of genetically engineered foods, Rense, 22 February 2008.

SumOfUs is a worldwide movement of people like you, working together to hold corporations accountable for their actions and forge a new, sustainable path for our global economy. Please help keep SumOfUs strong by chipping in $3.