Introductions

[Guest guest]

Hi all!

 

Elizabeth from Connecticut here, new to the list for almost a week. My husband, daughter and I have been vegetarians for about 5 years, and are going vegan now. It's been almost a month, and although it isn't perfect yet, we are feeling much better physically and spiritually :-)

 

Anyhow, I am glad to be here and look forward to meeting more of you!EBbrewpunx wrote:

 

Organics sponsored conference says 'no' to GMOFoodProductionDaily.com29/7/2003A recent UK conference which questioned the future of GMO foods in theUK has returned a resounding 90 per cent of its attendees voting againstit.Chaired by political journalist Sue McGregor, the debate was sponsoredby Yeo Valley Organic and the Organic Milk Suppliers Cooperative (OMSCo)and held at the Lakewood Conference Centre, Somerset. It was attended byaround 150 local people including farmers, politicians, doctors, vetsand members of the public.The argument in favour of GM food was presented by Professor VivianMoses, co-ordinator of a EU, GM education programme, and Tony Combes,public affairs director of Monsanto, the world's largest producer of

GMseeds.Speaking against the farming of GM crops were Peter Melchett, policydirector of The Soil Association and Nathan Argent, of Greenpeace.In his presentation to try and convince the audience that the adoptionof GM technology would be beneficial, Professor Moses explained thatvirtually every world safety authority has endorsed the 8 seeds approvedfor use in the UK and he explained that use of GM seeds worldwide wasincreasing by 10-20 per cent annually.He commented: "GM is already out there. The real issue now is how do weaccommodate different systems of agriculture in the same land area?"In a question and answer session, John Penrose, a local MP, who is akeen bee keeper, asked him how it would be possible to ensure that honeythat is currently organic remains uncontaminated by pollen fromgenetically modified plants, if approval is given for GM cultivation.Professor Moses commented: "I think we have to

acknowledge thatsegregation isn't possible. There will still be a choice, it just won'tbe the same as it used to be."Speaking against the planting of GM seeds, Peter Melchett said:"Genetically engineered crops represent a huge, uncontrolled experiment.Their outcome is unpredictable. There is huge uncertainty not just inthe process, but in the impact it might have on you, your children andthe environment. It would be stupid to go ahead."According to the sponsors this view was supported by many in theaudience, including GP, Dr Richard Lawson, who stated: "It took 20,000papers to establish smoking causes lung cancer. If GM planting isallowed and we don't get GM labelling as well, we won't know who haseaten it and who hasn't, so we won't have a control group of people ifit transpires something does go wrong."A vote by the audience, to show how many were for and how many wereagainst GM foods was strongly against,

with more than 90 per cent of theattendees saying they don't want to have GM food planted in Britain.This reflects the results of a poll that has been running on the YeoValley organic web site, where around 93 per cent of visitors have voted'No'Yeo Valley dairy products are all of organic origin, which follows thatmany of its customers would not be likely to consume GMO food products.The results of both polls and a summary of the debate are now being sentto the UK Government in advance of its forthcoming deliberations onwhether to allow further planting of genetically modified seeds in theUK. *************************************************************** Naive, narrow and biased... Carlo Leifert explains why he resigned from the government's GM sciencereview panel Thursday July 24, 2003The Guardian When I joined the GM science review panel, I thought that we would bedoing a detailed

risk assessment. We would work out where there might beproblems with GM, what the nature of the problems might be and whatresearch had to be done to prove whether or not they were significant. From the very start, we should have looked at whether something could gowrong with the technology itself. If you add an alien gene to a plant,how do you know what side effects you will get? We know that if we addgenes to bacteria, it can change things unintentionally, and studiesshow this can happen in plants as well. How good are our methods todetect these unintentional changes? But it soon became clear we wouldn't be doing a detailed riskassessment. Part of the problem came down to how scientific results arereported. If anyone had found that the GM process caused unwanted sideeffects in plants, it probably wouldn't make it into the scientificjournals. Side effects would be viewed as negative results andscientists tend not to

publish those. They often only get mentioned inPhD theses and reports to sponsors, because in those you have to explainwhy you've taken so long to do something. I made the point that to do aproper risk assessment, we needed to try and obtain that original datato get an idea of how often such side effects happen. This request wasignored. The panel felt we should focus mainly on peer-reviewed work andthat going into that much detail would take too long. I completelydisagreed with this approach. It quickly became apparent that the panel wasn't balanced enough toproduce an objective report. Most of the biologists who reallyunderstood the technical details of some of the arguments were stronglypro-GM. I felt that there should have been more specialists on board whoweren't so indiscriminantly positive about the technology. There shouldhave been more of an attempt to recruit scientists with good molecularbiology knowledge and a

more critical approach to the technology. For me, the last straw came when someone from the biotech industry wasasked to write the chapter on food safety. It seemed incredibly naive tome to have someone whose interest is in selling GM to do the riskassessment chapter. They were already convinced of its safety. I triedto resign quietly, because I was warned that it was not a good ideacriticising your peers on scientific panels. But once everyone knew Ihad resigned and I was asked about my reasons, I felt that I had toexplain why. Especially because what we have now from the panel is areport that is essentially pro-GM. It means the government decisionmakers may have to react to this scientific advice by allowing importsof GM crops and the growing of GM crops in the UK. In my opinion, this report is not carefully enough researched to givethe green light to GM and doesn't identify the uncertainties wellenough. The

report mentions that Americans have eaten GM food for about sevenyears now and they haven't suffered. But nobody has actuallyinvestigated the effect of GM consumption on public health in the US.The argument doesn't make sense, and to have it coming from a scientificpanel is really quite sad. I don't believe the government has tried to force the science review inany particular direction to push an agenda. My feeling is they areconcerned that GM technology could be risky to human health and theenvironment. I feel that the bias came from the strong lobby of pro-GMscientists and biotechnology representatives on the panel. They seem tobe much more prepared to take little or no evidence as meaning noproblem. I felt we should be more careful than that and say, let's getmore information and then judge it. There are already signs that Europe is being more cautious about GMtechnologies. The European Union is now seeking to fund

research intoways of improving our ability to check GM plants for unwanted sideeffects. They have also put out a tender for testing the difficulties ofco-existence between GM crops and non-GM crops). We should wait until wehave better techniques and more information on the questions that arestill open. As soon as improved methods for safety assessments areavailable we should insist they become part of the routine riskassessments of the GM companies. One of the conclusions of the report is that we have to look at GM cropson a case-by-case basis. I wouldn't agree with that. Right now we stillhave to check that there isn't some inherent problem with thetechnology. Professor Carlo Leifert, an expert in organic farming at the Universityof Newcastle, resigned from the government's GM science panel last week.The panel's final report was published on Monday. Interview by Ian Sample.