Something fishy is going on in the world of food production, and a York group is hoping to attract attention to it.

Emma Greenhalgh shows a tomato containing fish genes at the York City Harvest Stall

York's City Harvest Group set up a stall in Parliament Street comparing some foods containing genetically modified organisms with their organically-grown equivalents, and asking York residents: "can you tell the difference."

The idea was to press home the message that genetically modified products cannot be identified just by looking at them - and better packaging and labelling is required so that we all know what we are eating.

Laura Potts, co-ordinator of the group, said: "These are very serious issues which threaten the health of our local environment, and the health of people by putting control of our food production firmly in the hands of multinational chemical companies."

As well as providing samples of GM and non-GM fish and tomatoes, the stall today gave information about what people can do to lobby the Government, supermarkets and other organisations to keep us informed about what exactly we are putting on our plates.

Adam Myers, a member of the City Harvest Group, said: ""This stall is here to say you can protest by growing your own organic produce, or writing to your local councillor or MP and the big supermarkets.

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