Get ready for GM food, whether you like it or not.

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GM cultivation in any part of the world can contaminate your food. Though it has been contaminated through field trials and large scale cultivation in the US, the decision of UK to join the race from 2009 is worrying - Jagannath. GM WATCH dailyhttp://www.gmwatch.org---Michael Meacher MP was Tony Blair's environment minister from 1997 to2003.---You don't want GM foods? Too badBy Michael MeacherThe Sunday Telegraph, 30 July 2006http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/07/30/do3005.xml\ & sSheet=/opinion/2006/07/30/ixopinion.htmlSo, according to the Government, we are to have GM crops

commerciallygrown in Britain from 2009, and if you don't like your food being GMcontaminated, too bad. That's the clear message of [the Department forEnvironment, Food and Rural Affairs's] Defra's latest consultation paperproposing absurdly small separation distances between GM and othercrops, a voluntary system of compensation for ruined non-GM farmers, andpermission for GM crops to be grown at secret locations (rejecting apublic register of sites as sanctioned by EU law).All of this begs the question: is genetic modification of food safe?The question remains unanswered, but a pile of new scientific evidencehas produced some worrying results. Within the last few months a Russianscientist, found that an astonishing 55 per cent of the offspring ofrats fed on GM soya died within three weeks of birth compared with only 9per cent in the control group.Then an Italian researcher found that mice fed on GM soya

experienced aslowdown in cellular metabolism and modifications in liver andpancreas. A third study, in Australia, showed that genes from a beanintroducedinto a pea created a protein that caused such serious inflammation oflung tissue in mice that the research was halted.Enough, you might think, for the Government (or the EU, for theCommission is now in charge of GM policy) to stop the import of GMprocessedfoods until exhaustive tests had been carried out. Not a bit of it. TheEU, under pressure from the US, has pushed through the approval ofseven GM foods over the past two years, despite a lack of support frommember states, and has commercialised 31 varieties of Monsanto's maizeforcultivation in the EU.Yet we now know from leaked documents what the EU really believes. Onhuman safety it says that "there is no unique, absolute, scientificcut-off threshold available to decide whether a GM product is

safe ornot".And, it goes on, "it is a reasonable and lawful position" thatinsect-resistant crops (the GM crops being grown in the EU) should not beplanted till all the effects on the soil are known.Despite its own misgivings, the Commission has previously requiredmember states to vote twice on proposals to lift national bans on GMproducts in five countries, and when it was defeated in both votes, itusedits powers to force through the lifting of the bans anyway.It is a scandal that an unelected body is empowered to determine what anation may or may not eat, and that it did this because it was leanedon by the Bush administration in support of US agrochemical interestssuch as Monsanto. The US was able to exert this pressure because the WTOallows trade interests to override domestic food policies.Nor does the UK Government come out of this much better. Despiteknowing how hostile public opinion was to

GM, ministers voted to giveapproval to six of the seven GM foods when other countries votedagainst. Anddespite a public consultation on GM cultivation that showed 85 per centof the population against, they went ahead until, unexpectedly,environmental trials blocked this option.The strong pro-GM bias of the Government is manifest in another areatoo. It does not sit easily with Lord Sainsbury's position as scienceminister that his companies promoting GM foods have been awarded morethanGBP12 million by his own Department of Trade and Industry.The key question remains for GM: should the public interest prevail, orthat of some of the biggest US companies?Michael Meacher MP is a former environment minister "Our ideal is not the spirituality that withdraws from life but the

conquest of life by the power of the spirit." - Aurobindo.

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