Top restaurants ban GM food

30 December 1998

Top restaurants ban GM food

by FWi staff

SOME of the countrys most famous restaurants have banned genetically modified foods from their menus and joined calls for a five year moratorium on such products being sold to consumers.

Nineteen out of 23 restaurants rated 8 out of 10 or higher in the 1999 Good Food Guide for their quality of cooking have backed a Friends of the Earth campaign for a ban on GM food.

The restaurants include Londons Chez Nico, which is run by Nico Ladenis, and The Square, run by head chef Philip Howard.

The top chefs want the government to halt the sale of GM food until more is known about its effects on human health and the environment.

Critics of the move may claim the chefs are merely pandering to a passing anti-GM food fad from trendy London diners. But many of the restaurants are out of town.

They include Raymond Blancs Le Manoir aux Quat Saisons in Great Milton, Oxfordshire, and Waldows, the Cliveden restaurant at the Berkshire stately home once owned by Waldorf Astor.

Other famous restaurants involved are the Altnaharrie Inn in Ullapool, in the Highlands; the Merchant House, in Ludlow, Shropshire; and Fischers Baslow Hall, in Baslow, Derbyshire.