I knew the issues surrounding GM food were controversial but never did I imagine that my taking part in a protest would induce such a backlash. Naive? Possibly. Bewildered? Definitely. One of the Green Party's greatest strengths is its fierce emphasis on democracy and freedom of speech. Do we all of us agree all of the time? Absolutely not. We wouldn't move forward as a party if we did. So while I knew there would be fall out from my decision to attend I hadn't expected a lack of debate or listening.
I was never advocating violence. Not that I think strong protests don't have its place in society; look at the passion behind the student demonstrations against the Vietman War. They were instrumental in changing public opinion and withdrawing American troops. But I think perhaps I had never explained properly my reasons for protesting against the GM trial at Rothamsted. This was not about pre-meditated violence but about a community feeling hopeless and voiceless. I wanted to lend support to those who feel are dismissed as "luddites" for expressing their concerns over the GM trial.
An accusation which I am heartily sick of seeing is that the Greens are "anti-science". Some people think that to be an environmentalist and a progressive scientific thinker are mutually exclusive. What rot. As a society, scientific research is imperative for us to progress and evolve. What I am not in favour of is research taking place where not enough safety measures have been put in place or I feel that publicly funded research will be hijacked by commercialism. The debates over the science seem to be in danger of masking the bigger issue - the production of patentable plants. At the moment, especially in light of the lobbying scandal, the separation of big business, with the emphasis on profit and huge capacity for lobbying politicians, from independent scientific research seems unlikely.
On Sunday, after our friendly picnic and listening to a band, it became clear that the police wouldn't let us anywhere near the GM field, so most people simply went and sat at the entrance to a public footpath where the police line prevented them moving any farther.
Despite the savvy pro GM PR campaign from Rothamsted and the "eminently reasonable" arguments presented by the scientists, most campaigners and the public at large subscribe to the precautionary principle when it comes to GM. Safety concerns and the bottom line are not good bedfellows.
The world still produces enough food for its population. Instead of developing and investing in unnecessary GM crops, surely the overriding priority for the scientific community, policymakers and politicians is to work towards solving the problem of food losses. The FAO have calculated that 1.3 billion tons of edible parts of food produced for human consumption gets lost or wasted globally every year. This is an incredible one third of total production. Take the recent bumper harvest in India this year. Millions of tons of wheat are rotting because India ran out of warehouse space to store it whilst at the same time hundreds of thousands of its citizens are starving. Solving systemic problems such as these must surely take precedence over promoting GM technology and the fallacy that it is the only way to solve the world's food crisis.
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Jennifer Grayson: Eco Etiquette: Is Genetically Modified Food Linked To Kids' Food Allergies?
Bordeaux wine was saved 100 years ago by grafting American vines onto diseased French stock. Doesn't seem to have destroyed the planet.
False dilemma. We can build more warehouses and continue this research.
The blunt fact is that the intellectual case against GM food is in tatters. All that's left is a stew of logical fallacies, misinformation and emotive bluster.
What it doesn't do is provide food that is ultra-cheap (in purely financial terms), and it does not allow large companies, multinationals, supermarkets etc to control food markets.
It is the last point that is behind GM technology, as well as almost all 'conventional' agricultural research.
During the history of Rothamsted, 'agricultural research' has advised farmers to:
1) Rip out ancient hedgerows.
2) Grow massive areas of mono-cultural crops.
3) Use pesticides and artificial fertilisers liberally.
4) Cut jobs by mechanising.
In order, this has resulted in:
1) A crash in populations of native plants, birds, and other wildlife.
2) Destruction of countryside and exposure of overspecialised farmers to market forces
3) Colony collapse disorder in bees (imo), death of insect life, pollution of ground and waterways.
4) Rural poverty and a serious country/city divide.
Work with nature not agianst it- it might take time but then the environment will be more sustainable in the end.
GM testing on rats has shonw that their testicles were shrunken, in fertility was a problem amoungst SO many other problems. Read this stuff on Natural news.com and responsibletechinology.com.
You don't just wave a wand and "do" GM to something. It's an evolving process which we're still learning about - via facilities like Rothamstead, which perform publicly funded, safeguarded research.
Sensible people know that GM is NOT good at all. Have you not seen the awful resord that Monsanto has had over the decades? over poisoning towns n people, cancer giving etc,..
You are extremely naive if you think that having a piece of donkey skin with a tomato is ok, or that your urine might show high levels of Glyphosphate, or that any seeds going astray in your field will mean that Monsanto/or other company could just come n burn your field down, or that the cows in India died after eating GM cotton 3 days later??
http://www.soilassociation.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=OAhlGQ2Bf8Q%3D&tabid=197
I never actually see any that aren't paranoid delusions of 'What Will Happen If You Play God!!'
Nothing. Nothing will happen, because *gasp* there aren't any real safety concerns, at least none in which a GM crop influences neighbouring fields to suddenly start to fertilising months early than they are supposed to.
I
Second: what does increased use of pesticides have to do with GM?
Great idea. We'll just get everyone in Rothamstead to change careers and become logistics experts.
GM may not be the only way to approach a food crisis, but it's potentially a powerful tool. I think the idea is to make sure we get it right now, while traditional crops still work, rather than wait for desperate times.
The pressure to develop GM technology has absolutely nothing to do with food shortages. If it did, why introduce terminator genes that force farmers to buy new seed every year rather than save seed from last year's crop? And why develop technology that means a crop performs best when used with a particular brand of fertiliser or pesticide?
It is purely about cornering a staggeringly profitable market before someone else does it first.
'Our work is publically funded, we have pledged that our results will not be patented and will not be owned by any private company - if our wheat proves to be beneficial we want it to be available to farmers around the world at minimum cost.'
http://richarddawkins.net/videos/645814-open-letter-and-video-re-threat-to-gm-research
http://www.soilassociation.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=OAhlGQ2Bf8Q%3D&tabid=197
In order for scientists researching GM crops to be distracting from the problem of food loss there would have to be an opportunity cost, where enough scientists were needed to do one or the other that they couldn't efficiently do both at once. You haven't shown that to be the case.
There is not enough time to fight everything, and it should be focused on what is important. Stopping this research is really rather pointless, I agree about the need to be careful concerning barriers to pollen transfer. However, the whole corporate industry and its supporters needs to be targetted, not little research institutions. We need to focus on winning batttle rather than in being misled into pointlessly attacking research institutes when the real enemy is elsewhere. The corporoate system bolstered by neo-classical economics which is currently collapsing the world economic system as most may have noticed. A point to note, the case of neo-nicotinoid pesticides is an infinitely most worrisome development which has to be stopped given the negative effects on pollinators such as bees.
Capitalism works pretty well, most of the time. Sure - every recession and downturn is greeted with joy by anti-capitalists who herald recession as the demise of all evil. But the brutal fact is this: no centrally managed economy works. The Chinese economy only took off after they dumped socialist economics and embraced capitalism wholeheartedly.
The gene business does not worry unduly. GM technology is not overly a pancea for most things, just a fad of the moment. However, the mega-corporate involvement is the toxic additive to the mix. This needs to be controlled, although teh politicains are as morally corrupt as the corporate bosses e.g. Jamie Dimon, etc..
http://www.soilassociation.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=OAhlGQ2Bf8Q%3D&tabid=197
http://www.indymediascotland.org/node/19734
However, if you want something to be really worried about look up citrullination & nanoparticles in the cells of a body. This was a report just out in Nanomedicine by Mohamed et al 2012 http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid%3D25406.php&sa=U&ei=c3jIT4PMEYeR0QXBgK3aAQ&ved=0CAUQFjAA&client=internal-uds-cse&usg=AFQjCNFMpicIDwsu5wNK1V4bvO8d-6eJtg
When people warble on about non-existent health risks, it simply weakens the real argument about cross contamination.
in the late 40s we had peple complaining against cross bread wheat no different than gm only it took 12 years to arrive at the new seed not 2 with gm same results
gm food is onlt a quick way of cross breeding foods but hery quickly where it may take 15 years to breed a new type of bean seed genetic mod can do the same within 1 or 2 years i remember the troubles we had in devon in the jate 1940s over cross bread wheat growng near maidencombe
no different that gm
For example - introducing a gene from a bacteria or insect into a cereal crop such as wheat. In nature, they just wouldn't come close to one another.
The law allows it, and the court awards it. Go to it Sirrah. Yet tarry, thou bold merchant of menace.
No mention holds the bond, save as much as one scintilla of genetic material escape said bounded land. Harvest now thy pound of flour. Though loose no gorgon, nor gene genie, from thy ground. What say you thus?
"I was never advocating violence."
No, nor rape of Rape, i’faith.
"those who feel are dismissed as "luddites"
thought not to see their looms and livelihoods, struck down with spongy-form heaped high upon yon funeral pyres.
"the Greens are "anti-science"
So hear them rail, ‘gainst enablers of great climate change.
"not enough safety measures"
If science knew what it was doing, it wouldn’t need to experiment. An experiment is a gamble. Where is the risk assessment explaining how the genetic material will be neutralized, if it all goes horribly wrong?
"Commercialism"
Have Dispatches do a documentary in America, to see what’s on its way here.
"the precautionary principle"
Who would have thought that thalidomide wouldn’t include pregnancy in its experimental protocol. Its not as if it’s a chance in a trillion occurrence.
"the fallacy"
and the facts. Lets have a national debate, if ignorance be the nub.
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A feeling. Not a virtue.
Having lots does not mean you are good.,