We Need GM Food Like a Hole in Our Kidneys

[Guest guest]

http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/062205HA.shtml

 

We Need GM Food Like a Hole in Our Kidneys

By Kirsten Schwind and Hollace Poole-Kavana

CommonDreams.org

 

Tuesday 21 June 2005

 

When the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) meets this year

in Philadelphia, Monsanto and its colleagues will not be gathering to

talk about how to save the world. The goal of this industry, like any

other, is to make a profit by convincing consumers that we need what

they're selling. Genetically modified (GM) food - plants and animals

that have been inserted with genes from other organisms - aren't

meeting any real human needs. Despite claims from the biotech

industry, GM foods cannot end world hunger, and new studies add to the

evidence that they may pose a serious threat to human health.

 

A recent study conducted by Monsanto itself indicated

abnormalities in the kidneys and blood of rats fed MON863, a strain of

Bt corn that many Americans eat every day without our knowledge.

Monsanto has resisted calls from the European Food Safety Agency to

release the full study to the public, leading to a court order to do

so from a German judge. Thank goodness for some degree of concern from

the Europeans, because watchdogs in the United States are gnawing on

the bones of corporate-induced complacency. The US Food and Drug

Administration (FDA) approves GM foods for public consumption simply

by comparing the nutritional content between GM and non-GM foods, and

checking a database of known allergens. According to the logic of the

FDA, we are the lab rats.

 

What of the famed argument that GM crops are worth it because they

will resolve world hunger? GM crops fundamentally cannot end hunger

because hunger isn't caused by a lack of food. The world currently

produces enough food for everyone on earth to consume over 2,800

calories a day - that's enough to make most people a bit pudgy. The

problem is that food doesn't go the hungriest people because they

don't have the resources to buy it or grow it. Pennsylvania is full of

productive farms, yet one in ten residents of the City of Brotherly

Love know hunger all too well. Hunger is caused by a lack of access to

basic human rights, including good education, health care, housing,

and living wages - in the Untied States and throughout the world.

Hunger is also caused by racism and inequality. These topics aren't on

the agenda of this year's BIO conference.

 

If the world were to face a future shortage of food, GM technology

would not be much help. Planting small farms and gardens with a

diverse array of crops can grow several times more food per acre than

the large, mechanized farms for which GM seeds were developed. The

main reason some farmers plant GM crops is to try to lower their

production costs. But GM crops don't always accomplish this goal

either. Recently the Indian state of Andra Pradesh banned Monsanto

from selling GM cotton seeds after farmers realized they were more

expensive to grow than the regular varieties.

 

GM seeds cause other headaches for farmers as well. For as long as

humans have grown food, farmers have developed better seeds through

natural cross-breeding, and exchanged seeds to share the best

varieties. Seeds are a fundamental common good of human civilization.

When biotech companies convinced the US Patent Office to allow them to

patent seeds, single companies claimed ownership of entire cultural

legacies, with just one laboratorial tweak. As farmers buy GM seeds

from Monsanto, they must sign a contract recognizing the company's

intellectual property rights over the seed, and promise not to share

or save any to use the next year. However, plants breed naturally with

no knowledge of who signed a contract, and pollen from GM corn blows

easily into neighboring fields. Monsanto has mounted a campaign to sue

farmers whose fields have been unknowingly contaminated with genes

from GM seeds, driving some farmers into bankruptcy.

 

The protesters greeting this year's BIO conference in Philadelphia

are driving home an important point - unless you fancy the idea of

being a lab rat, genetically modified food is a risky technology that

we simply don't need.

 

Kirsten Schwind is Program Director at the Institute for Food and

Development Policy, also known as Food First. She holds a masters

degree in Natural Resources Management from the University of

Michigan, and collaborates with small-scale farmers throughout the

world. Hollace Poole-Kavana is an Associate at Food First who studied

biology at Cornell.

 

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