Europeans are becoming increasingly passionate in their resistance to genetically modified (GM) foods, staging colorful protests and destroying test fields of plants in addition to refusing to buy the foods. Pollsters say that only 1 percent of Britons think there is any value to genetically modifying plants, and British supermarket chains have been among the most aggressive in refusing to carry GM products. Many Europeans see the U.S. government as a co-conspirator with the biotechnology firms that are trying to force their products into European markets. Pierre Lellouche, a member of the French Parliament committee on environmental safety: “The general sense here is that Americans eat garbage food, that they’re fat and they don’t know how to eat properly.” Whether or not the Europeans’ words sting Americans, their boycott of GM foods does: Last year, the European Union bought just $1 million worth of American corn, down from $305 million in 1996, and soybean sales have dropped dramatically too.
