A Washington-based coalition of consumer and health groups opposed to genetic engineering has called on Kraft Foods, one of the largest food manufacturers in the world, to stop using gene-altered ingredients in its food products.

Lisa Archer, a spokeswoman for the Genetically Engineered Food Alert coalition, says the group is staging demonstrations at food stores in hundreds of American cities to press Kraft to pull all its gene-altered products from the shelves.

"We are very concerned about the potential effects of these, and we believe Kraft should remove these products until they are actually proven safe for our environment and for our health," she said.

A Kraft Corporation spokesman notes that numerous federal regulatory agencies have approved their food products as safe. And he says there is "a growing consensus" among government, scientific and medical experts about the safety of biotech products. "We have strong confidence," the Kraft official adds, "in the process by which that consensus was reached."

But organizers of the campaign against Kraft argue that in Europe, where consumer resistance to gene-altered foods has been strong, the American food company has already withdrawn several of its targeted food products from the market.

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