ABSTRACT
It is unlikely that corporate purchasing policy has ever before been as much in the news as in the period 1998-1999. The extraordinary controversy over the use of genetically modified (GM) foods, crops and feedstocks has been a major focus of political debates and environmental and consumer activism. It has brought to the public’s attention not just the activities of research scientists in remote laboratories supposedly ‘playing God’ with so-called ‘Frankenstein foods’, but also of the sourcing policies and marketing strategies of major retailers. Particularly in Europe, major corporations have had to be, depending on one’s view, nimble and responsive to market pressures, or hypocritical and cynical in pandering to ill-informed Luddism. Suddenly, what firms buy and from whom they buy it, and how environmental issues are included in these considerations, has become the subject of media attention from tabloid headlines to leaders in, for example, the Guardian and the Wall Street Journal.1
