Ecobreves – ARGENTINA: Identification for Transgenic Foods

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

BUENOS AIRES, May 20 2001 (IPS) - Officials in San Carlos de Bariloche, a city in southern Argentina, decreed this month that foods produced with genetically modified material must be identified as such. The measure obligates supermarkets and groceries in this tourist destination city to display a list of items they sell that include products which originate from laboratory-manipulated material.

Argentina is the world's second leading producer of transgenic crops, after the United States. It is because of these products that the European Union resists buying the South American country's agricultural exports.

The environmental group Greenpeace applauded the decision of the Bariloche authorities and has appealed to the Argentine Congress to require labeling of transgenic foods nationwide.