Scientists and Consumers Retaliate Worldwide Against GE Foods

[Guest guest]

Scientists and Consumers Retaliate Worldwide Against GE Foods

Vitality July 2001

by Helke Ferrie

_http://www.kospublishing.com/_ (http://www.kospublishing.com/)

 

Pesticide resistant superweeds, resulting from GE plants hybridizing with

natural ones (something the industry swore could not happen), are devastating

Canada’s prairie provinces and have started to invade Ontario and New

Brunswick.

 

Once upon time, we are told, the mother of humankind, Eve, met a big snake

who told her a big lie and tempted her with a perfect, God-made, organic

apple. When she believed the lie and ate it, humans lost residence in the

Garden

of Eden and the whole mess of human history unfolded.

 

 

 

Today, every time you sink your teeth into a God-made delicious organic

apple you are engaging in a political act of protest against another Big Lie

and

taking a step into the new Garden of Eden which is humanity’s birthright. The

politics of food is uniting the human race, perhaps because food is even

more inescapable than war. To understand how your grocery cart is the place of

worldwide awakening, in which you can participate for the health of your

family and life on earth, consider the following recent events.

 

 

 

The Canadian government asked the prestigious Royal Society of Canada to

appoint a panel of experts on agricultural science, medicine, philosophy,

biotechnology, toxicology, and law to provide guidelines for the regulation of

food

biotechnology in Canada. That panel is about as straight, square and

mainstream as you could ever expect. Yet, a miracle happened which is enough to

restore one’s faith in the human race. Instead of support for a policy of

keeping

people ignorant about the genetically modified science fiction we are

expected to believe (for the financial benefit of biotech companies), the

government got a huge slap in the face. The Royal Society’s January 2001

report is a

withering critique of federal GE food policies. The panel provided more than

50 sober recommendations, none of which are compatible with business-as-usual

for the biotech industry nor for government policy—a terrible blow, as Canada

is the world’s third largest producer of GE foods.

 

 

 

The usual congratulatory phrases introducing a new report were abruptly

pulled from the government website after two days, when our bureaucrats and

industry-friendly politicians had had a chance to actually read it.

 

 

 

The Royal Society confirms that genetically engineered foods were developed

in secret, released into the environment and our stomachs without mandatory

scientific safety studies and without public consent. The few available

scientific studies (not based on secret industry science) disturbed them, so

several recommendations call for an outright moratorium (such as on fish with

human

genes).

 

 

 

Almost simultaneously, the European Union and the United States completed a

similar exercise prompted by the prestigious journal Science which had

published a review article showing that by the year 2000, there existed only

eight

peer-reviewed articles on GMOs in the world’s scientific database, and three

of those were sponsored by Monsanto, with incomplete data disclosure. There

was, however, tons of industry propaganda on saving the world’s starving

masses. The EU-US panel consisted entirely of biotech scientists handpicked by

the

Rockefeller Foundation. Then the miracle happened again—the panel agreed

that science, safety, and public consent were missing.

 

 

 

The European parliament promptly passed strict legislation which places the

burden of proof on the companies that produce GE foods, and requires

scientific transparency and labelling of the products. Europe had already

banned

bovine growth hormone (the first GE product developed) after Canada revealed

its

carcinogenic potential. In the U.S., public debate finally began in earnest

(only one-fifth of Americans even know they are already eating GE foods). By

March 2001, opinion polls showed that more than half of the U.S. population

doesn’t want to eat it at all. The New York Times clucked that Europe was “

technophobic.†Actually, European research is taxpayer-supported, not

industry-dependent as North American universities are; also, Europe’s

sophisticated

food culture did not sell out to the processed-food industry.

 

 

 

This year, in swift succession, one Asian country after another passed

similar legislation. Most striking was Ecuador’s rejection of the U.S. food

donations containing GE products. Apparently, the Ecuadorians found natural

disasters easier to handle than genetically engineered foods. At the same time,

the

StarLink taco shell scandal occurred when Aventis released GE corn, not

approved for human consumption, into the food chain via processed foods. The

resulting multi-billion dollar class action suits are considered by industry

experts to be so serious a blow as to put the entire enterprise of food

biotechnology into jeopardy.

 

 

 

The corporate credibility crisis is, however, hurting all of us: pesticide

resistant superweeds, resulting from GE plants hybridizing with natural ones

(something the industry swore could not happen), are devastating Canada’s

prairie provinces and have started to invade Ontario and New Brunswick. The “

golden rice†engineered to provide extra vitamin A to combat blindness in the

Third World has turned out to be fool’s gold: it has less vitamin A than a

carrot, ounce per ounce, and is only absorbable in the presence of plenty of

fat—

something sorely lacking in the diet of the world’s poor, for whom it was

supposedly designed. Monsanto’s famous GE potato was voluntarily withdrawn

because of “lack of public supportâ€â€”the public being big guys like

McCain’s who

have the corner on potato chips and refuse to use GE products. In a desperate

attempt to hang onto some respectability, Monsanto appointed a panel of

medical and life science experts from famous universities around the world to

help

“improve how Monsanto serves society†through “dialogue, transparency,

sharing, respect, and delivering benefits†(Ontario Farmer, June 12, 2001).

If

these experts turn out to be anything like the ones that wrote the Canadian and

EU-US reports, Monsanto won’t know what hit them.

 

 

The world’s premier science journal, Nature, reported on February 8 the

results of a ten-year trial comparing natural versus GE sugar beets, canola,

corn

and potatoes. Untended, within four years the GE varieties became extinct

(47 of the 48 plots), unable to reproduce and handle the ups and downs of

climate, temperature, and pests—unlike their natural counterparts. On April

19,

Nature magazine sported Granny Smith apples on its cover. The lead article

discussed a five-year research project comparing organically grown and

conventional (pesticide-sprayed) apple orchards. The result: the organic apples

are

sweeter, more profitable and “ranked first in environmental and economic

sustainability.†Ouch! A hard blow for the corporate giants preaching that

the world

can only be fed if agriculture becomes more efficient by buying their

pesticides and accepting their improvements on nature. Adding insult to injury,

the

United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) reminded scientists

of their “moral responsibility†to not rush products to market on the basis

of “insufficient test results.†The UK’s premier research centre, the

John

Innes Centre, announced that all genetically engineered crops are “

fundamentally flawed,†because messing with plant genomes “weakens themâ€

and “

interferes with [various] functions.â€

 

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