"A hard core of pro-GM evangelists won’t accept the democratic opinion" - Joanna Blythman

[mark at tlio.org.uk]

From: 	John Cunnington <devalts at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: 	Fw: Joanna Blythman "...a hard core of pro-GM evangelists 
won’t accept the democratic opinion"
Date: 	Fri, 1 Jun 2012 06:27:49 +0100 (BST)

  
The media coverage of the expensive trial at Rothamsted Research of GM 
wheat, that has a synthetic gene blasted into its genome, has paraded 
the assertions of pro-GM scientists and acolytes about supposed 
'benefits' whilst remaining silent on costs, risks and rejection of 
the technology that threatens global food production. Joanna Blythman, 
below, exposes the flaws:

"Increasingly, GM looks like a discredited technology, one that is 
being superceded by skilled conventional plant-breeding methods and 
more advanced but less arrogant scientific approaches...

Unfortunately, a hard core of pro-GM evangelists won’t accept the 
democratic opinion and take no for an answer. They are determined to 
ram GM down our throats, whether we like it or not.

... when independent scientists produce research that demonstrates the 
dangers of this inherently risky technology, their results are 
rubbished by the GM bully boys ... the pro-GM fanatics, who just can’t 
accept that they preside over a losing, discredited cause."

In contrast, the majority food system, based on biodiversity and food 
sovereignty, is resilient and can feed us all for ever. We need to 
work with those in the front line of defense of our food.

For more, see the new, informative and rooted film  "Seeds of Freedom" 
http://vimeo.com/30792307 . It will be released internationally on 12 
June.


Article below (pics can be viewed on url):



Vandals! No, not protesters trashing crops but the GM lobby still 
trying to force increasingly discredited Frankenstein Food down our 
throats
By Joanna Blythman
Ref: 
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2151380/GM-lobby-trying-force-increasingly-discredited-Frankenstein-Food-throats.html#ixzz1wFoNbqwQ

Genetic modification was supposed to be the ground-breaking science of 
the future. Its magic wand would feed the world and make toxic 
pesticides redundant. But, in reality, it has dismally failed to live 
up to the expectations of its cheerleaders. The high crop yields the 
GM lobbyists promised us just haven’t happened. Farmers are having to 
use more pesticide, not less, on their GM crops.

Thanks to GM, vigorous new superweeds stalk the fields in countries 
such as the U.S., where controversial GM crops have been forced onto 
the market — against the wishes of citizens — at the behest of 
profit-driven corporations.
What’s more, we now have evidence that GM crops can cross-pollinate 
with non-GM crops, contaminating land for miles around.

Mercifully, in the UK and throughout Europe, GM ingredients in foods 
must be labelled by law. Concerned consumers have made it clear in 
poll after poll that they do not want to eat GM food.

  And since no one wants to buy products with GM ingredients, 
retailers have refused to stock them. Unfortunately, a hard core of 
pro-GM evangelists won’t accept the democratic opinion and take no for 
an answer. They are determined to ram GM down our throats, whether we 
like it or not. And this is what lies at the heart of the reckless 
open-air experiment with GM wheat being conducted near Harpenden, 
Herts, where a once-respected scientific institute, Rothamsted 
Research, has become a centre for this bankrupt technology.

This research station has used an astute PR campaign to convince us 
that this experiment is just harmless ‘research’. But in using our 
countryside as an open-air laboratory, this trial could trigger dire 
and irreversible consequences for other crops and species.

The GM lobby has attempted to characterise anyone who dares to 
challenge its right to endanger farmers’ fields neighbouring 
Rothamsted as ‘witless vandals’, ‘zealots impervious to scientific 
reasoning’ and, even more ludicrously, by likening them to 
‘book-burning Nazis’.

The hysteria of the language reflects only the weakness of the pro-GM 
case, and after this weekend it looked deliberately misleading. The 
good-humoured crowd of 400 peaceful protesters who turned up on Sunday 
to register their opposition to this provocative experiment, was akin 
to that of a village fete and bore no resemblance to a gang of thugs.

These were not the fanatics of green activism so luridly portrayed in 
GM propaganda, but rather ordinary farmers and concerned citizens who 
recognise the appalling damage that could result from GM contaminating 
the food chain in Britain. Such a situation would not only alarm the 
public but also spell economic ruin for our agriculture, since 
opposition to GM technology is so powerful throughout the world.

The pro-GM lobby behaves as though it alone understands science, and 
portrays the rest of us as morons wallowing in simple-minded ignorance 
and prejudice. Even when independent scientists produce research that 
demonstrates the dangers of this inherently risky technology, their 
results are rubbished by the GM bully boys.

Research in Switzerland has shown that some GM wheat varieties have 
sprung up almost two miles away from where they were grown in trials 
and that, in the field, they cross-pollinate six times more than 
conventional varieties.

Just as worryingly, in the United States, trials of genetically 
modified rice ended up contaminating the nation’s entire rice crop, 
with disastrous results for U.S. farmers whose sales were hit on a 
global market which shuns GM crops. When this technology was developed 
in the late 1990s, the GM pioneers argued that all the public’s fears 
about it were baseless.

But it has hardly worked out like that. Studies in 2011 in Canada 
revealed traces of pesticides that had been implanted into crops using 
GM techniques were present in the umbilical blood of 83 per cent of 
pregnant mothers who were tested. The GM industry had always argued 
that if these GM toxins — designed to kill crop pests — were eaten by 
humans, they would be destroyed in the gut and rendered harmless. But 
the fact that they had reached umbilical blood meant not only that 
they survived the gut but could pass across the placenta to the 
growing foetus. The Canadian research team warned: ‘Given the 
potential  toxicity of these pollutants and the fragility of the 
foetus, more studies are needed.’

The threat to animals is just as worrying, for a number of trials show 
kidney, liver and reproductive damage in animals fed GM foodstuffs. 
There is also growing evidence that herbicides used on genetically 
modified crops could increase resistance in more than 20 different 
types of weeds. The fact is that, for all the blithe rhetoric of the 
GM companies, we simply do not know enough about the potential 
consequences of tampering with nature.

The risks involved in genetically modified crops are compounded by the 
failure to deliver their promised benefits. In India, there is deep 
bitterness among cotton farmers who were encouraged to buy GM seeds on 
the basis that they would raise yields and reduce the need for costly 
pesticides. Yet the yields have been severely disappointing, with the 
result that many Indian farmers have been driven into debt.

So widespread is the despair that, today, one Indian farmer commits 
suicide every half hour — and there is every possibility that the 
false promise of GM is a contributing factor. At Rothamsted, the GM 
wheat grows daily in our sunny weather now that the weekend’s 
protesters have been rebuffed, and the risk of unintended cross 
pollination remains. But hard questions need answering where this 
misguided GM wheat trial is concerned.

Rothamsted Research is backed by more than £1million of taxpayers’ 
money, while the bill for the unprecedented security around the site 
defending this unpopular experiment — also funded from the public 
purse — must also be considerable. The aim of the trial, says the 
company, is to find out if the GM crops can repel insects such as 
greenfly and blackfly and thereby reduce the future use of pesticides.

But UK farmers rarely grow the spring wheat used in the trial and 
already have other well-established ways of controlling aphids. Why 
should UK taxpayers fund a trial for a product that farmers don’t need 
and consumers won’t eat? Increasingly, GM looks like a discredited 
technology, one that is being superceded by skilled conventional 
plant-breeding methods and more advanced but less arrogant scientific 
approaches.

One of these, called Marker Assisted Selection, focuses on using the 
best genes in a crop for an intense programme of crossbreeding to 
enhance its future productivity. This means working with the grain of 
nature rather than challenging or distorting it, as happens with GM.

The GM companies might condemn their opponents as vandals, yet they 
are the ones who show the real irresponsibility towards the natural 
world. That, after all, is the lesson of the GM saga so far. The 
experience of GM-contamination incidents, involving long-grain rice in 
the U.S. and flax in Canada, shows that GM companies refuse to accept 
liability for their products and are extremely reluctant to compensate 
farmers and companies in the food chain, without court action 
compelling them to pay up.

So if contamination does occur in fields around the Harpenden wheat 
trial site, or even further afield, can we assume that Rothamsted 
Research will compensate those left to carry the can — farmers with 
contaminated fields, millers with GM residues in their flour or 
manufacturers who have to pay for expensive tests to establish that 
their products are GM-free? Of course not. Any recompense seems 
unlikely, since Rothamsted Research has already shown a cavalier 
disregard for both environmental safety and democracy. And if there is 
no compensation, you can be sure no insurance company would be 
prepared to cover farmers near the site against GM contamination, when 
the risk of that contamination is so clearly present.

The real bullies here are not those who oppose this deeply unpopular, 
risky and unnecessary technology, but the pro-GM fanatics, who just 
can’t accept that they preside over a losing, discredited cause. 
Joanna Blythman is the author of What To Eat, published by Fourth 
Estate.

Read more: 
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2151380/GM-lobby-trying-force-increasingly-discredited-Frankenstein-Food-throats.html#ixzz1wFoNbqwQ