Using a litany of lame and hackneyed justifications British Environment Minister Owen Paterson gave the GM industry a big boost yesterday by stating that the UK was prepared to “lead the World” in implementing a more relaxed regulatory framework for GM experimentation. Clearly, following the recent G8 summit US corporations and politicians have decided that what’s needed in Europe is a compliant mouthpiece to act in their stead.
The statement elicited a number of reactions from some wiser heads and even a stinging rebuttal from Joanna Blythman in the Daily Mail, no less. Below are a few highlights:
“Owen Paterson’s GM dream will make it harder to feed the world. The British Government constantly claim that GM crops are just one tool in the toolbox for the future of farming. In fact GM is the cuckoo in the nest. It drives out and destroys the systems that international scientists agree we need to feed the world. We need farming that helps poorer African and Asian farmers produce food, not farming that helps Bayer, Syngenta and Monsanto produce profits.”
“Paterson remains blinkered by the unfulfilled promises of GM crops. GM technologies have consistently under-performed, despite claims from the biotech industry. Where GM crops have been planted they are locking farmers into buying inputs and costly seed, while encouraging resistant weeds and insects and not delivering the increased yields as promised. The main causes of hunger – poverty and global inequalities in the distribution of food cannot be resolved by GM crops,”
“Paterson appears to [ignore] any science not peddled by big corporations. Only industry-funded research shows any benefits from GM crops, which do not increase yields and are having harmful effects on the environment in North and South America,”
“Paterson should be asking what works rather than blindly following agribusiness propaganda. The international consortium of research centres …. has used non-GM techniques to produce dozens of varieties of drought-tolerant maize, increasing African farmers’ yields by 20 to 30%. A host of other successes include blight-resistant potatoes and crops enriched with vitamin A, iron and other essential nutrients.”
A Silent Forest – The Growing Threat, Genetically Engineered Trees (2009)
It’s entirely understandable that when we think about genetically modified crops finding their way into the food chain and inevitably into our own genetic makeup the first thing we’re likely to be concerned about is the effect that this technology is going to have on our health and that of our children. It’s a plain fact however that the immediate consequences for our physical integrity could be the least of our worries in this huge profit-driven experiment.
A Silent Forest is a disturbing documentary by filmmaker Ed Schehl about the dangers of genetically modified “toxic” trees. Narrated by geneticist David Suzuki, and with comments and explanation by an array of experts this film makes for uncomfortable but essential viewing.
If awareness is the key element in our rejection of this life-negating and destructive technology then this documentary needs to be seen by as many people as possible. Pass it on!
Selected Quotes:
“Biotechnologists think: genes are genes, it doesn’t matter where you stick them, and they’ll just function the way they normally do. Any geneticist who thinks about that should know better. Genes don’t function alone. They function within the context of the entire genome… it’s just a mistake to think that genes act as if their traits are expressed regardless of where they exist.” David Suzuki
“This one gene, one protein, one trait caricature of how genetics works – that’s the whole foundation of the biotechnology industry – is a complete misrepresentation of everything we know about how genetics and complex organisms actually work.” Brian Tokar, Director, Biotechnology Project Institute for Social Ecology
“What we’ve found through our research is that genetically engineered trees are truly the greatest threat to the worlds remaining native forest since the invention of the chainsaw.” Anne Petermann Co-Director Global Justice Ecology Project
“This is about the corporate enclosure of life itself.” Aziz Choudry Organizer, Gatt Watchdog
“There’s a conflict at the heart of science between science as a method of inquiry based on reason, evidence, hypothesis, and collective investigation, and science as a belief system, or a worldview.”
Rupert Sheldrake
High Noon
There are food and chemical corporations, technological institutes, and certain sections of the media who would have us believe that the current acrimonious debate about genetically modified organisms is a showdown between, on the one hand, scientific pragmatism represented by those who want to save humanity using “cutting-edge” technology, and on the other, a bunch of raggle-taggle Luddites seeking a retreat back to a nostalgic, mythical past when food was still true and honest and the world was pure. But in fact, when looked at closely this simplistic division is little more than a construct and a transparent trivialization of the issues.
Bitter Divide
The truth is that science itself is bitterly divided, not only on the issue of the genetic manipulation of foods, animals, and humans but on many of the other crucial choices that will have to be made in the very near future. Take for example the endless debate about global warming, with science bickering and dithering while the time in which something could feasibly have been done about climate change has come and gone. In fact, if one follows the to-and-fro of the debate on GMOs, and sees the fault lines that are coming to the surface it’s not difficult to conclude that science is currently undergoing an identity crisis the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the time of the Renaissance.
Astrolabe
Belief System
In much the same way that a religious dogma is formulated Western science has, over the centuries been picking and choosing, adding and subtracting to shape and develop its own, now rigid, belief system. See for example how in the time of the Crusades, having plundered all it could from Arabic knowledge in the fields of medicine, mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy, Western science then conveniently chose to forget the enormous debt it owed to Islamic scholars and their advanced culture. How much are we told about this now in our great centres of learning, and how much more inconvenient knowledge has been hidden or obscured? Seen in this light it’s clear that Western science, having long sought to position itself as the incorruptible beacon of truth leading mankind into the future is in fact just as capable of deceit, of being mistaken, corrupted, and manipulated as any other body in human affairs, and we don’t have to go back very far in history to see the truth of that.
If society expects us to believe all that Western science tells us about its own past, in the knowledge that great chunks of “Truth” have been erased, hidden, distorted, or discarded, why should we blindly follow the same dogmatic mentality into the future? It seems that orthodox science generally has too high an opinion of its own ability to act with logic, reason, and impartiality.
Bon Appetit!
Jellyfish
Now we’re told that technology has made it possible to grow meat in laboratories, presumably with a side dish of vegetables produced on a 3D printer. They want to splice chicken genes with those of jellyfish to produce eggs that glow in the dark. They want to produce pigs that grow five times faster than the slowpokes we’re currently stuck with. There are even signs that bio-tech science is prepared to jettison a lumbering liability like Monsanto, particularly in Europe, in order to calm the concerned consumer and carry on with the important business of creating “magic meatballs” and programmable colas undisturbed.
Watch out for a subtle shift in terminology in this context. Out goes the term GMO, in comes “cultured meat products”, and “fantasy foods”. Those who reject such unneeded and unwanted fabrications are to be labelled “squeamish”, or even downright ignorant for not facing up to the reality of the times we live in.
Lousy Science
Meanwhile those scientists who genuinely know what they’re talking about are making other noises. They’re telling us that the steady flow of published research shows that there is significant concern about GM technology. They’re telling us that the whole foundation of genetic engineering is based on a misunderstanding, a mistake, or as geneticist Dr. David Suzuki calls it: “just lousy science.”
Read what former research scientist for the Canadian government and GM food advocate Thierry Vrain now has to say about the dangers of genetically modified organisms and the recklessness with which they are being produced and marketed: Former Pro-GMO Scientist Cites GM Food Safety Concerns
They’re also telling us about what happens when they don’t toe the party line, how they’re harassed, ostracized, ridiculed, and in some cases given to understand that their physical safety could be compromised for speaking out. Again, this is nothing new but rather it follows a distinct and familiar pattern. In the early years of the Green Movement, scientists such as Rachel Carson, for example, were brought to the brink of ruin for daring to contradict the orthodoxy of the scientific establishment and its paymasters.
Guinea Pigs
Not surprisingly those advocating the mass experiment known as GM technology express exasperation and contempt for those they feel are holding them back. They want the debate to “move on” and to drive their own agenda forward unhindered by the recalcitrant guinea pigs that will have to deal with the consequences in perpetuity.
But this is far from being a simplistic story about science and whether or not new technology should be given free rein to solve the world’s problems, or whether one particular school of thought has more of a handle on “The Truth” than another. This is about the right to freedom of choice, about democracy and who runs it, and about the knowledge of the fundamentals of life and who owns it.
Scientific research in the pay of profit-motivated corporations or dependent upon something as transient as a handout from here-today, gone-tomorrow politicians is in no position to be claiming the moral high-ground, telling us what truth is and what it is not, what we should or should not believe, should or should not be feeding our kids, either now or in the future. Those days are gone. So now who are the Luddites?
Good reasons why the world doesn’t need genetically modified crops:
1. GM foods won’t solve the food crisis
2. GM crops do not increase yield potential
3. GM crops increase pesticide use
4. There are better ways to feed the world
5. Other farm technologies are more successful
6. GM foods have not been shown to be safe to eat
7. People don’t want GM foods – so they’re hidden in animal feed
8. GM crops are a long-term economic disaster for farmers
9. GM and non-GM cannot co-exist
10. We can’t trust GM companies
Genetically modified (GM) foods are often promoted as a way to feed the world, but this is little short of a confidence trick. Far from needing more GM foods there are urgent reasons why we need to ban them altogether.
Read a fully detailed and referenced version of the above list at the website GM Watch
For a comprehensive evidence-based examination of the claims made for the safety and efficacy of genetically modified crops see the GMO Myths and Truths Report at the Earth Open Source website.
In recent, occasionally heated discussions with friends and others about genetically modified foods the following argument comes up time and again: “How else are we to feed the world’s exploding population if we don’t utilise GM technology to increase crop yields?”
A number of counter arguments spring quickly to mind. There is, for example absolutely no scientific evidence that GMOs increase crop yields in the long-term. On the contrary the damage and deterioration inflicted on biodiversity and the environment by the methods used to cultivate GM crops are guaranteed to store up massive problems in the very near future, as thousands of American farmers are now discovering.
Evidence Based
Meanwhile, there is plenty of evidence that traditional and contemporary organic methods and basic good husbandry virtually guarantee healthy soil, robust and abundant crops, and therefore good, plentiful food that not only fills the stomach but lays the foundation for good health.
Since when did it become ok to waste vast quantities of anything let alone a fundamental resource such as food?
If governments and corporations mean what they say when they bare to us their bleeding, altruistic hearts then why not do the blindingly obvious and start by vigorously encouraging an environment in which the wholesale waste of food is unacceptable?
The “starving millions” argument so often introduced into any discussion about GMOs is the result of a combination of a lack of knowledge and the subtle propaganda of those who stand to profit on an unimaginable scale from pursuing their agenda against a background of our ignorance or indifference.
“Waste not, want not” may sound like a trite homily to “consumers” used to having every desire fulfilled at the touch of a button, but think about those words for a moment. This culture of waste is something that’s come about in the space of two generations and it’s neither an inevitable consequence of “progress” nor simply the way of the world. Things don’t have to be like this. We decide, and our individual decisions, however small they might seem at the time make a difference.
For various reasons, but mostly because it takes up time that I feel could more usefully be spent in other ways I’ve been very close to closing down this blog. However, not having been able to bring myself to the point of actually pushing the button I’ve decided to change course a little bit in the hope that the project will once again begin to make sense to me.
More focus is what’s needed, and so starting with this post I’ll be concentrating on what I feel is the single most important and pressing issue of the times we live in, namely the wholesale appropriation and corruption of our genetic heritage by a cartel of privately owned corporations, aided and abetted by national governments, private armies, and fraudulent or misguided science.
Not Done
Climate change and deterioration is a battle lost it seems and we’ll have to deal with the consequences as best we can. The argument for and against the use of genetic engineering in order to facilitate the centralization of the source, cultivation, and distribution of the world’s food supplies into the hands of a select few is however a battle that’s still being fought, and it’s far from done and dusted.
It’s not my intention to waste anyone’s time (including my own) broadcasting my personal opinions about the subject at hand. Anybody who’s ever taken the trouble to read this blog will pretty much know where I stand. Rather I’d like to spend the time available helping to point readers in the direction of those who know and understand with more precision than I exactly where the dangers lie.
Scare Stories
It’s not difficult to find scare stories about GM technology and the profit motivated manipulation of every link in the food chain. Take for example the recent case of the Indiana farmer dragged through the courts by Monsanto and brought to the brink of bankruptcy by the GM giant. But rather than filling page after page with alarms, horror stories, and negativity I’ll make an effort to keep in the foreground the knowledge that not only do scientifically proven alternatives to GM technology exist, (and have always existed), there is also a huge and growing movement against this dangerous and irreversible folly.
In order to do so I’ll highlight and share every instance of resistance that I can find, from organizations and individuals that work to establish and maintain seed banks free of F1 hybrids and GMOs, to movements committed to slow food, localization, and life after Peak Oil. Along the way (and at the risk of preaching to the converted) I’ll share everything I know or can find about the ways and means to work with and alongside Nature for our mutual benefit.
Think Twice
I have a strong feeling that the vast majority of people simply haven’t yet realized the scope and importance of this issue. Many people I know scarcely ever think twice about what they eat or where it comes from as long as it’s easily and cheaply available. This is exactly the state of mind that corporations like Monsanto depend and thrive on. A passive populace in thrall to consumerism can’t or won’t understand the arguments for and against until the decisions have been made for them, by which time they’ll have other things to worry about.
Taking personal responsibility for the fundamentals of life while sticking up as many fingers as you can spare to the corporations is a way out of this mess. I decide, you decide, we decide – that’s the way forward.
By the way, music – because it’s life-affirming and a joy will always have a place on this blog.
This short documentary is all the more chilling because of its grounded approach and total lack of drama or theatre.
With European governments under fierce pressure to relax restrictions on the development and propagation of GM crops British farmer Michael Hart travels to the US and talks to a number of farmers who have experienced at first hand exactly what it means to be trapped in The World According to Monsanto. As you’d expect from such men there’s little or no philosophising or pontification, just the straight facts from direct experience.
Those interviewed are not rebels or idealists, or even organic farmers. In most cases they are simply farmers who bought into the Monsanto system because they thought that it was the right thing to do. Several years down the line they find themselves disappointed, worried, or downright appalled at the consequences, but powerless to find a way back.
This is a cool, pragmatic look at a potentially disastrous future for growers and consumers in Europe and around the world should the GM lobbyists be allowed to get away with what they’ve seemingly already accomplished in the US – the grand theft of our food.
In the debate between those for and against the wholesale introduction of GM technology into the European foodchain the GM industry and its propagators are keen to portray themselves as the voice of the reasonable, sensible majority, using “common sense” and scientifically justified principles to further their argument. When that doesn’t work they waste no time in their deployment of tabloidesque headline grabbers of the “World on Edge of Starvation” variety in order to sway the disinterested or undecided. Like a boxer fighting to dominate the centre of the ring and keep his opponent dancing at arms length around the margins they are anxious to take and hold the middle ground of public opinion.
The Method
One way they do this is by portraying those who oppose GM technology as “unscientific” and therefore essentially ignorant of the complex issues involved. Ideally those in opposition should be seen by the silent majority as irrational extremists whose reaction to “progress” is to avoid reasoned debate and resort to Greenpeace-like tactics of disruptive protest and scaremongering. Opinions such as those of Professor Jonathan Jones who recently published an article in The Guardian in support of GM crops are highly representative of the voice of the scientific mainstream. In fact his article is almost textbook in its approach:
Establish scientific credentials
Disparage opposing organizations (in this case the British organization Stop GM) as unreasonable and unwilling to enter into debate
Cram the article with narrow but simplistic detail justifying genetic research into basic, essential foods
Wag the finger of warning at European foot-draggers for being so far behind the US, China, Canada, etc in the development and acceptance of GM technology
Finalize with dire warnings of the consequences of the lack of such acceptance to a rapidly growing world population threatened by climate change
The Unmentionables
It’s difficult to see exactly what purpose such an article has other than contributing to the drip, drip, drip of highly selective information into the public domain. In fact, if you take the trouble to look, its main interest was in what it didn’t say, rather than what it did. It didn’t mention Prof. Jones’ own possibly less than scientific interest in the business of GM technology; it didn’t say anything about the tried and tested business practice of selling patented seed to farmers worldwide who then become entirely (and legally) dependent on the few giant corporations that supply them; it said nothing about the dangers of inevitable cross-pollination and genetic mutation about which mainstream science remains wilfully ignorant. And crucially no mention was made (or is ever made by GM’s proponents) of the success of the research and development of pest and blight free crops by organizations using organic, environmentally responsible methods.
The Weakest Link
Portraying those who dispute the inevitability, even the need for GM technology as unrealistic Luddites is, at best, mischief making, designed to stir up the emotions of those who see any form of disagreement with authority as a threat to their own wobbly belief system. At worst it can be seen as another element in the co-ordinated propaganda used by government and industry to coerce us into accepting this dangerous, unnecessary and generally unwanted technology. From this viewpoint Britain- England to be more precise – looks to be the weakest link in the European chain of resistance, with the government apparently determined to bring about a wider public acceptance of the technology.
Stay Informed
It’s important to keep in mind that those advocating GM technology more often than not have something to sell. In fact it is elementary to conclude, even after only a little basic research, that financial gain on an almost unimaginable scale is at the very core of the drive to flood the world’s food supply with genetically modified crops. Those who control and supply the technology will truly have the world in the palm of their hand.
Knowing what we know about how science, agribusiness, and politics walk hand in hand toward their own vision of a bright, shiny future why should we believe that the politicians and the professors are doing anything other than jockeying to be at the head of the queue when the spoils are divided? We need to ask questions, stay informed, and pass on the knowledge we’ve gained to those who care enough to hear. This is an issue that’s simply too important for us to shut up and leave to the “experts” to decide for us.
Photo by Kumasawa
There’s a wealth of excellent information available out there if you’re willing to track it down. Below are some suggestions to get started:
www.powerbase.info Includes an A-Z list of articles on people and organizations behind the push for GM crops
“Owen Paterson’s GM dream will make it harder to feed the world. The British Government constantly claim that GM crops are just one tool in the toolbox for the future of farming. In fact GM is the cuckoo in the nest. It drives out and destroys the systems that international scientists agree we need to feed the world. We need farming that helps poorer African and Asian farmers produce food, not farming that helps Bayer, Syngenta and Monsanto produce profits.”
“Paterson remains blinkered by the unfulfilled promises of GM crops. GM technologies have consistently under-performed, despite claims from the biotech industry. Where GM crops have been planted they are locking farmers into buying inputs and costly seed, while encouraging resistant weeds and insects and not delivering the increased yields as promised. The main causes of hunger – poverty and global inequalities in the distribution of food cannot be resolved by GM crops,” 
“Paterson appears to [ignore] any science not peddled by big corporations. Only industry-funded research shows any benefits from GM crops, which do not increase yields and are having harmful effects on the environment in North and South America,”
“Paterson should be asking what works rather than blindly following agribusiness propaganda. The international consortium of research centres …. has used non-GM techniques to produce dozens of varieties of drought-tolerant maize, increasing African farmers’ yields by 20 to 30%. A host of other successes include blight-resistant potatoes and crops enriched with vitamin A, iron and other essential nutrients.” 
90%
A Silent Forest – The Growing Threat, Genetically Engineered Trees (2009)
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