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Re: European caution



a couple of thoughts on the European awareness of GE stuff. . .
one thought ive had is that (although this is changing
rapidly), Europeans seem to be so much less "supermarket" oriented with
the existence of more local and smaller scale places to buy food. Could
there be less social distance between farm, food, and consumers, making
people more aware of what the heck they are eating unlike the "black box"
of so much of the supermarket food available in the US? Second, demand for
organiclly produced food has continually outpaced supply within the EU,
which is the largest market for the stuff in the world. Im going to
generalize unmercifully here, but I feel one of the factors
of this has to do with the fact that much of the early alternative farming
and organic movements were situated in Europe (Balfour, Howard, Steiner)
and these movements have been successful in raising awareness in the
agriculture/human connection as well as more recent issues like GE stuff
hitting their shores from the US. Interestingly, both the Hungarians and
Polish are now
in the act of protesting much of the stuff coming into the country calling
for a boycott and "not wanting to be part of food-related experiments on
people". . .

cheers,
mg

Mike Goodman
Geography Department
University of Oregon


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