A nine-year-old B.C. girl and her mom have launched a petition campaign urging the Girl Guides of Canada to rid their famous fundraising cookies of genetically modified organisms.
Victoria resident Maya Fischer said she won’t eat or sell Girl Guide cookies until the organization bans GMOs, which are crops engineered to resist pests and herbicides but whose use has become increasingly controversial in Canada and abroad.
“It’s kind of gross that there’s a GMO in a cookie, in cookies, and we’re expected to sell them,” Fischer told CTV News.
She and her mother Linda Cirella, a Guide Leader, have started a Change.org petition demanding organic cookies, and had collected more than 25,000 signatures by Friday evening.
Cirella said the Girl Guides have made positive changes to their cookies in the past by removing trans fats and switching to recycled materials for their boxes.
She believes GMOs are unsafe to eat, and that Girl Guides should make scrapping them its next priority.
“The more people learn about it, I think more and more people will support it. And I’m really hoping Girl Guides will step up and just say, ‘You know what? We can be leaders in this,’” Cirella said.
Girl Guides of Canada spokeswoman Laurie Hooker said using organic ingredients would make the treats prohibitively expensive, and that the organization relies on cookie sales to survive.
“We don’t have donations that come from government funding, we’re not able to apply for gaming grants,” Hooker said. “If consumers choose not to purchase [our cookies], they’re really denying the girls the program and the great things that we do.”
Hooker said she encourages the family to pressure the government to change GMO regulations if they want to make a difference.
“I think they need to fight the good fight at the level that it should be,” she said.
Fischer points to the Girl Guides’ motto that calls on members to be true to themselves, and take action to make the world a better place.
“One person alone can’t make the biggest difference, but when there’s a lot of people together – that can make a difference,” she said.
With a report from CTV British Columbia’s Ed Watson
