Non-GMO Lunch: Chiayi City's First Arrow in Campus Food and Agriculture Education
Chiayi City Mayor Twu Shiing-jer recently convened the establishment of the "Chiayi City Government Food Safety Promotion Committee," which will pursue the vision of a "Food Safety Capital" through such dimensions as "building a food safety map," "promoting food and agriculture education and policy," "cultivating certified laboratories," and "building the Chiayi brand." While we welcome Mayor Twu's attention to food safety, the Campus Lunch Non-GMO Action Team also hopes to remind Mayor Twu, who before the election signed a pledge to "remove GMO ingredients from campus lunches," that the establishment of the food safety committee is exactly the right moment to concretely fulfill that pledge.
It is well known that Taiwan's food self-sufficiency rate is as low as about 30%, and more than 90% of soybeans come from imported GMO varieties. The vast majority of what schoolchildren eat every day in campus lunches is precisely this kind of GMO soy product, which is not only feed-grade but also raises concerns about excessive glyphosate pesticide residues. GMO technology remains endlessly controversial to this day, and the only thing that can be affirmed is that the risks of GMOs are not yet settled. To avoid making schoolchildren, who are still in their growth period, into guinea pigs for global GMO experiments, a comprehensive ban on GMO ingredients in campuses is the most fundamental approach.
The 19 county and city heads who signed the non-GMO campus pledge have one after another stated their positions on non-GMO campus lunches. Tainan Mayor Lai Ching-te, near Chiayi, said in an interview that he had already sent a letter requiring schools not to use GMO items; in recent days, Taichung Mayor Lin Chia-lung and Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je have respectively announced increases in campus lunch funding and promised to increase the frequency of supplying non-GMO products and organic fruits and vegetables.
On the other hand, food and agriculture education emphasizes that schoolchildren can, through hands-on farming, understand the relationship between land, food and life, thereby reducing waste and gaining the ability to understand the intrinsic value of food. If the complete removal of GMO ingredients from campuses can be made the first step in promoting campus food and agriculture education, and if the multi-layered social impacts involved in the GMO issue - Taiwan's food self-sufficiency rate, ecological protection, pesticide residues, health risks, global food culture, and environmental fairness and justice - can be integrated into the relevant curricula, and further paired with actually planting non-GMO soybeans and other coarse grains, this would be nothing less than a complete environmental education system extending from land to table. Chiayi City has excellent geographical, natural, agricultural and cultural conditions to develop food and agriculture education well.
We are not unreasonably demanding that campus lunches be transformed overnight; however, proposing a concrete implementation timetable and related implementation plans is a responsibility from which the competent authorities should not shrink.
Mayor Twu once said he would use four arrows to change Chiayi. Today (3/16) he will invite 7 bureau and department heads and 17 outstanding selected experts and scholars to convene the first food safety committee meeting. We sincerely suggest that non-GMO campus lunches be included in the discussion items, and that a concrete implementation plan be proposed so that parents can feel it - shooting the first arrow for promoting campus food and agriculture education.
Letter-writing action: Request that the non-GMO campus lunch implementation plan be included as a discussion item of the Chiayi City Food Safety Committee