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Food Production and Genetic Engineering
Peter Rae—1999 |
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Dear American Friends, Old & New |
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| My first visit back to the United States,
after an absence of 6+ years, left me, as always, invigorated
by all those I met and by the energy with which projects
and ideas are being pursued. |
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| But, for the first time, I was also left
with a deep-seated concern: it appears that the complexity
of the many fundamental issues confronting US society
(and therefore eventually the world) has frozen many
formerly activist people into mesmerised inactivity.
Or it has encouraged the ostrich syndrome, whereby
heads collectively are stuck into the sand. |
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| This was nowhere more apparent than around
the issue of genetic engineering in food production.
The silence I found in the US contrasts strongly with
the momentous struggles taking place here in England,
in Europe and much of the rest of the world: during
my 3 week visit only one mention, in a local paper,
and one programme, on National Public Radio, referred
to the issue. By contrast, genetic engineering is on
everybody's lips over here and in most of the remainder
of the world. |
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| This lack of debate, and apparently
awareness too, has fired me to write this open letter.
Feel free to circulate it, claim it as your own, extract
from it, do whatever you want, but please get its message
into circulation. Help identify somebody willing to
fund and make a TV programme for Public Service TV — there
is one hell of a story waiting to be told. Provide
me with a platform and I shall come and speak. |
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| Why am I addressing this letter specifically
to my "American Friends"? Simply because you
belong to the most powerful nation on earth, the nation
that is currently forcing something upon the rest of
this planet which is truly frightening. Wherever the
US genetic engineering companies, led by your Monsanto,
are challenged over introducing their genetic technology,
the response is "if (sophisticated) Americans (farmers
and consumers) have accepted this exciting technology,
why can't you". Yet, from my brief observations
neither your farmers nor your consumers have any idea
what the issues are and certainly have not consciously
welcomed biotechnology with its full ramifications |
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| At issue is the following— |
| (a) |
the driving force of capitalism is the maximisation
of profits (by the managements of given corporations)
and the creation of as stable a base as possible
for future revenues and growth |
| (b) |
led by the US, business has hit upon the idea
that if it can establish ownership rights over
the basic building blocks of life on earth, then
it will have secured for itself a business base
that will take care of all its growth and performance
needs for as long as there is life on earth (gene-hunters
are furiously patenting the genes of plants in
the emerging nations — for example, the owner
of the gene that differentiates basmati rice
from ordinary rice can now claim a royalty on
every grain of basmati rice ever grown anywhere
in the world!!) |
| (c) |
additionally, alter the basic building blocks
of life just sufficiently to show that they are
of your laboratory's creation and you can collect
royalties on these until kingdom come; gradually
replace the natural building blocks of life with
those you have created in your laboratory and
you control all life forms (for example, discover
the gene that makes an individual resistant to
a certain disease and from that moment onwards
you will have an absolute global monopoly on
any further research around that gene and on
any application of knowledge related to it) |
| (d) |
of course, you have to be able to collect your
royalties, which, in the case of seeds might
be difficult, because by definition the 2 billion
farmers of the world are disbursed — so you
need to make sure that they will pay for new
seeds each season (and not cheat by following
the age old pattern of holding back a third of
this season's harvest as seed for the new season):
you do this by building in the so called "terminator
gene", which, unless you buy the seed and
a certain chemical key, will destroy your new
season's seeds before they can germinate (first
you have to force the 2 billion farmers to move
away from their multiple-crop traditions and
become mono-crop farmers, which removes their
independence, self-sufficiency and sustainability:
you do this by forcing their governments to open
their markets in the spirit of fair trade, you
then persuade the same governments to take on
costly foreign loans in order to raise economic
standards, such loans can then only be repaid
by food exports which require cash crops which
require seeds and fertilisers … (and so
the ground is prepared) |
| (e) |
the consumer cries for labelling of GM (genetically
modified) food in order to offer freedom of choice
in Britain and Europe, now beginning to be echoed
in the US, is an important mile stone in upsetting
the master plan illustrated above. But it cannot
end there, it has to be the beginning of the
end of a madness apparently sanctioned by our
capitalist system hijacked by Frankenstein (in
Europe, all GM food is being collectively called "Frankenstein
food" or "Frankenfood"—adopt
it in the US too so that people can begin to
visualise what we are up against) |
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| The meeting in Frankfurt, just ended,
of the so called G8 nations, the wealthiest nations
on earth, resolved, under pressure from the German
Greens, to conduct an international survey of the true
ramifications of genetically modifying (or 'engineering')
food. The Paris based OECD will conduct this survey.
But be warned, like the WTO who act as world policeman
enforcing (US) free trade policies, the OECD is dominated
by the same players who started the madness of genetic
patenting (based on lies I refer to later). This is
our chance to let our governments know what we truly
think of the whole issue. |
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| Yesterday's papers carried a report that
the first US petition for the labelling of GM food,
supported by 500,000 signatures, has just been delivered
to Congress (to the Democrat Chief Whip of the House
of Representatives, David Boniors). A beginning at
last, here is a web site on the internet where you
can register your views, www.safe-food.org/welcome.html. Why this apparently
simple petition represents some real difficulties I
shall describe later. Your nation has historically,
on balance, done more good and has been more generous
than any other nation ever before, and for this I have
admired and loved your country and will go on doing
so. But the consistent and relentless drive for success,
mostly measured financially, which previously enabled
your generosity is now threatening everything that
has gone before. Things are now being done in the name
of the peoples of the US about which they have no idea
and the true threat of which has not been spelt out,
a threat not just to others, but ultimately to the
natural evolution, possibly even survival, of the entire
human race. |
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| Of course this letter needs to (and will)
go to my friends everywhere, but none of them have
the chance to influence the government of your most
powerful nation, which is now acting as very short-sighted
bully boy on behalf of a very small number of commercial
interests led by men with very narrow views and time
horizons. But blame not them alone, they are only doing
their job (these words seem to echo down the corridors
of time) as defined by our corporate laws and practices
formulated within the narrow confines of our economic
system. Robert Shapiro, president of Monsanto is on
the record for having stated that it is the company'
objective to become "a global seed company (the
largest!)" able "to consolidate the whole food
chain". |
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| This letter is a second attempt. The
first version was driven by raw despair at the apathy
in your country and what your government is seeking
to impose on the rest of the world. A devastating article
in one of our mass-circulation newspapers triggered
my writing the first letter immediately following my
return — if you want to catch a flavour of that
anguish, please go straight to the extract from the
Daily Mail, which I have appended to this letter. I
realised too that if I allowed myself to be moved by
(my wholly justified) despair alone I would miss an
opportunity to draw together and highlight the inter-linked
issues raised by genetic engineering. |
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| I therefore put myself through a crash-course
in informing myself about these major issues, which
I have summarised above. Most depressing, in a sense,
is the fact that while genetic engineering is being
presented to us as an exact science, it is not, and
now that I have a deeper understanding of it (as you
will if you keep reading) I understand that it never
can be. My reading further confirmed that most contributions
to the discussion are presented from a single perspective,
reflecting — unsurprisingly — the writer's
background — the biologist tends not to address
the economic implications; the economist not the ethical
/ moral issues; etc |
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| I have here sought to draw together
the main issues and show how they inter-connect. Genetic
engineering undoubtedly gives us a chance, at the dawn
of the New Millennium, to take a hard look at our human
arrogance, reflected by the genetic engineers in the
so-called life-sciences based companies; the morality
of business; the neo-imperialism threatening to engulf
the emerging nations; the sterility of the pursuit
of corporate growth for the sake of profit alone; the
gullibility of the public in our so-called "developed" societies
of the industrialised countries; the shameful lack
of support we give to alternative solutions that do
not conform with our rush for profit; questions over
the very role of our current form of government in
the modern world. Unless we address these issues we
will through sheer ignorance permit happenings more
damaging than anything gone before to be visited upon
our planet and all its life. The myths and legends
that have stayed with us from antiquity, indeed have
guided our intellectual evolution, carry warnings of
the dire consequences arising from ignorant interference
with nature. |
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| My main challenge here lies in presenting
each issue in sufficient detail to illustrate the overall
challenge while ensuring that this does not become
the longest and most unreadable letter ever, or leaving
you the reader so depressed that you decide that there
is nothing you can do about this issue. I can not have
detailed knowledge in each of the relevant issues,
my grasp of each is however good enough to be able
to paint the big picture. If I fail with you, then
at least give me credit for having tried and pass it
on in a form you believe your recipients will get the
point. I would welcome a speaker's platform on which
to express the passion I feel behind these words. When
originally contemplating this task I almost gave up
because of its presentational complexity, I certainly
proceeded only after releasing a silent cry for help.
Please provide feedback, suggested alterations and
additional material for a possible expanded version.
In a very few places I have deliberately allowed a
repetition to remain so that a key point is truly rammed
home. |
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| The engine for the widespread introduction
of genetic engineering is the profit motive. "Greed" is
a word widely used, I do not like it, as it implies
a judgement that is not justified for as long as we
subscribe to the capitalist model which at its core
demands the maximisation of profits. This model does,
however, remain silent about morality; ethics; our
relationship with, and responsibilities towards, nature;
humility over our understanding of nature and its evolutionary
process; and, most dangerously, it does not encourage
the long view on anything. By way of contrast, the
Hopi Indians will only permit something to be done
if they can determine what the likely impact will be
on the next 7 future generations; if they can not,
the development is turned down, no matter how greatly
lucrative and beneficial it may have been for the present
generation. Under our system, we are wedded to the
short-term — end-of year profits, increased yields
on shares, and on securing sufficient market share,
if not control, to ensure future economic growth. |
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| We need therefore to become aware of
the economic drive behind genetic engineering: key
tools in support of the achievement of our economic
objectives are advertising / PR / spin-doctoring and
however else we camouflage what often amounts to no
more than half-truths. Let me follow one strand of
the economic argument connected to genetic engineering,
which is that because so much money is spent on research,
commercial companies must be permitted to recover this
money by patenting their discoveries. First, to the
financial reality — the costs for research in most
Western economies, certainly in the UK, are actually
carried by us, the tax payers: we provide 100% tax
write-offs, plus a further 25% tax write-offs each
year for ancillary costs; we give direct grants; we
buy the products we have funded for our state programmes
and we provide our personal records free-of-charge
as research data (some of the most active gene-hunters
have located themselves in Utah because of the free
access to generational records). The cost-recovery
argument therefore sucks. But we have bought it. |
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| What does the patenting of genes mean?
It means that the basic building blocks of life are
in the process of being bought up and owned — wherever
a discovery is made by "gene-hunters", say
which gene enables a particular family to avoid a certain
disease, or how one variant of rice differs from another,
this gene is patented and its use, even for research,
requires henceforth a payment to the patent holder. "Gene
hunters" have identified at little real cost genes
in many of the plants and crops in the emerging nations,
have patented them and now demand that poor farmers,
whose ancient knowledge they have stolen in the first
place, pay them every time they re-plant their own
seeds! If they do not pay up, the patent holders will
seek enforcement of their rights via an international
body, the World Trade Organisation (WTO), more about
whom later. In order to make their demand for royalty
payments more enforceable, terminator genes are being
introduced into the seeds — these genes kill the
seeds unless made harmless with a proprietary chemical. |
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| Imagine, within the next decade it is
anticipated that every single gene in your and my body
will have been identified for its characteristics and
will have been patented, i.e. the knowledge pertaining
to it may only be used after payment to the patent
holder. Do I really have to spell out what this will
do, for instance, to research? Is it really that surprising
that Asian and African farmers have written to the
European Union begging that they resist this commercial
and ethical madness! That Indian farmers have demonstrated
and burned down as many GM crop fields they have been
able to identify. After complaints by the US government
the World Trade Organisation has already found against
us Europeans because we have refused the importation
of certain GM foods from the US, unless clearly labelled,
and are continuing to do so. Your government is therefore
entitled to impose certain trade sanctions against
us. Europe will survive, but the same tactics have
forced several emerging nations to give in. |
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| In a very thoughtful article, one of
our members of parliament (Alan Simpson MP) argues
that bio-technology, as it is currently taking shape,
and democracy are incompatible. He also warns against
the emergence of a new form of economic colonialism — although
the most exciting gene-banks are currently to be found
in the lesser developed emerging nations, only we in
the industrialised countries can afford to apply the
rules we have created (and have the muscle to enforce)
to take legal possession of these genes. |
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| One of the other arguments put forward
is that genetic engineering will help feed the hungry
of the world, particularly as the Green Revolution
can no longer do so. |
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| Before looking at this claim we need
perhaps to remind ourselves what the Green Revolution
was and how it lived up to its promises: under this
banner we created mono-crop cultures, which would generate
cash from the rich world markets, safely away from
poor small local economies. Local markets required
the greater (and hence more difficult to control) bio-diversity
of multi-crops. Mono-crops required high doses of fertilisers
and pesticides, improved irrigation (as they required
greater quantities of water) and heavy mechanisation.
Incidentally, it takes on average 1000 tonnes of water
to grow 1 tonne of traditional wheat, any increased
demand is therefore a major item. In the short term
we fed more people than ever before. But at what a
price — according to the World Food Organisation
(FAO) we will by the end of this year have lost 95%
of the genetic diversity we had at the beginning of
this century. We are continuing to lose species (which
equals bio-diversity) at the rate of 50,000 per annum
and project that this will go on for decades, even
without the introduction of genetic engineering. These
Green Revolutionary methods also degraded the land
to a frightening extent, it is estimated that 40% of
all fertile land was severely degraded. |
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| Mono-cultures are notoriously prone
to disease, even the USA is at risk — in 1970/71
and 1975 the corn belt of the US was devastated by
corn blight; Indonesian and Indian farmers lost most
of their rice crops. By contrast, India, for example
had more than 23,000 varieties of rice at the turn
of the century (now only a handful); to this day women
in some villages grow as many as 70 different varieties,
each carefully bred from generations of experience.
Such variety guaranteed survival in the event of disease.
Projects in Africa and India are showing that by reverting
to traditional methods and improving on them, even
in arid regions yield increases of 50% and 100% are
achievable and dependency on pesticides and fertilisers
reduced to minimal levels. Such successes are, naturally,
seen as threats in the boardrooms of the life sciences
companies — reduced chemical dependency! greater
improvements in yields (relying solely on traditional
methods) than is possible with genetic engineering!
farmers, mostly women in these instances, proud and
self confident!—none of this will increase profits
(and bonuses, and egos, etc.)! |
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| Contrast these successes with the experiences
of farmers in India who were persuaded to switch to
cotton as a mono-crop: much of their land has become
denuded of top soil and lost all fertility. The peasant
farmers lost their economic self-sufficiency and independence
as 10 years ago they rarely grew just one crop, they
planted a variety which enabled them to feed themselves
and their families with enough left for the markets
and the next season. Under pressure from the World
Bank and the IMF India was forced to open its borders
to Western imports and techniques, which resulted in
farmers having to buy GE seeds, chemical fertilisers,
etc. As they could no longer hold back seed for next
season's planting, farmers had to borrow from money
lenders, who have been granted credits by the seed
companies, with which to buy new seed. They have now
become caught in the debt trap from which they are
unlikely ever to escape. For many this has meant death — in
one state alone, Andrah Pradesh in Central India, the
last 18 months has seen 500 farmers commit suicide
with very the chemicals that could not save their crops — world
prices in cotton fell, pests became immune to pesticides
and the hybrid seeds they were forced to buy proved
themselves notoriously unreliable. These are the very
people who not that long ago would accompany every
stage of the seeding and harvesting process with ceremonies,
dance and blessings and would so imbue their crop with
that ingredient X that differentiates home cooking
from the offerings of the best restaurants. Picture
this same formerly happy man, average age late twenties,
average debt probably less than $100, with a young
wife and 2 or more children, being found dead in his
small, now infertile field, clutching a plastic bottle
marked 'poison', staring sightless at the sky with
the grimace of agony from chemical poisoning on his
face. And multiply this not only by 500, but across
many other states and nations. And all because executives
in far away corporations are innocently executing a
master plan which will ensure their company's growth
and profitability well into the next century. |
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| Another undermining of the lie, that
GM foods will benefit the hungry of this world, lies
in the fact that we could feed the world today if only
we permitted our farmers to produce, rather than — for
political reasons — paying them to produce less
and let their land lie fallow. |
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| This is perhaps a good moment to get
a better understanding of what the term "genetic
engineering" really means: all living organisms
consist of millions of cells. Each cell contains a
nucleus. Inside every nucleus are strings of DNA, organised
into chromosomes, usually two per cell, one from the
father, the other from the mother (46 in all, in the
human body). Genes are the sections that carry genetic
information and make up the double helix of DNA. To
give an idea of the complexity we are here looking
at — if all the DNA in the human body were unravelled
it would reach to the moon and back 8000 times: and
we, still stuck in the model of a mechanical universe,
arrogantly presume to know how each of the constituents
in such a long thread interacts with all the others.
In fairness, we tend to use the haunting term "substantial
equivalency" when making claims about this understanding! |
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| Genetic engineering is often likened
to the historical crossbreeding process without which
we would not have the diversity in foods we have. This
is a terrible misrepresentation. Nature has a built
in safety mechanism even when closely related species
interbreed, e.g. a horse can mate with an ass and produce
a mule, but the mule is sterile. Genetic engineers
on the other hand overcome these safe-guards by using
a carrier, or vector, that has learned to invade foreign
bodies, typically genetic parasites, including viruses
that cause diseases in animals and plants into which
foreign DNA matter is placed. To find out which vectors
have taken the DNA, all are placed in an antibiotic
liquid, those that are found resistant to the antibiotic,
called 'marker genes', are then removed and used for
genetic engineering purposes, i.e. inserted into the
life-form to be genetically engineered. In order to
increase the effectiveness of these markers, so called
'promoter genes', also taken from bacteria or viruses,
are introduced with the marker genes. They have the
effect of switching on the new gene in its new host.
Such promoters are known to accelerate the production
of substances that at higher levels make the host toxic,
whereas previously this was not the case. |
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| Get the picture — take that gene
of an arctic fish (e.g. the flounder) which permits
it to live in the cold seas of the arctic, place it
in a vector that is known to be hostile to a tomato
or strawberry, mark those vectors that survive the
antibiotic test and splice these into tomatoes or strawberries,
add some promoter genes and you end up with frost-resistant
tomatoes and strawberries. We can introduce genes into
plants taken from bacteria, viruses, insects, animals
and humans. Surely it does not take a rocket scientist
to see that this technique is fundamentally different
to cross-breeding within related species, often conducted
by nature over hundreds of millions of years, or by
man over entire life cycles! |
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| We are choosing to ignore what not only
what our common sense, our inner voice, tells us, but
what other scientists are saying too, namely that "genes
interact with the environment in which they are in" (Barbara
McClintock won the Nobel Prize in 1983 for this discovery).
Recently, in the US, a cow egg had its nucleus removed
and replaced with a human gene. It was allowed to live
to 14 days and then destroyed, not only because of
existing laws, but because there was concern that certain
cow-characteristics may have remained attached to this
cow-human. The mind boggles (and my hairs stand on
end) when I try and contemplate what this cow- human
might have looked like (remember the centaurs of Greek
Myth?). |
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| So what can go wrong in this world,
visible only to the most powerful microscopes? What
damage can the genetically modified plant cause in
the environment? According to the GM camp nothing,
or only something so remote it is not worth contemplating. |
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| In 1989 a new brand of a widely used
food supplement was released on to the US market — L-tryptophan.
This brand had been made with a genetically modified
bacterium which produced increased levels of L-tryptophan.
Shortly after its introduction 5000 people in the States
fell ill with some horrible symptoms—37 died
and 1500 have been left with permanent disabilities.
Because the brand was not marked as "GM product" it
took time to locate the source of the outbreak. The
product had been passed for human consumption as it
had been found to be "substantially equivalent" to
L-tryptophan produced without genetic engineering (with
which no problems have ever been encountered). The
same rules that permitted a GM product to poison 5000
innocent humans today still regulates international
GM safety precautions. |
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| Transgenic soya beans containing a brazil-nut
gene was found to be allergenic by almost causing the
death of somebody allergic to nuts and with no idea
that soya might contain such a gene. There are reports
of the gene of a fruitfly reaching humans and causing
a neurological wasting disease. The marker gene for
GM tomatoes carries resistance to kanamycin, which
is so highly toxic that it is only used in the treatment
of drug resistant tuberculosis. Exposure to such tomatoes
is likely to decrease the effect of kanamycin at precisely
the time when tuberculosis is on the rise again and
its bacteria are showing worrying resistance to many
drugs. |
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| The use of antibiotics in determining
marker genes risks making bacteria, including those
living in the human gut, resistant to antibiotics.
This is already occurring in some hospitals where super-bugs
are resisting all forms of antibiotics. An East German
study in 1983 showed that the guts of pigs fed with
antibiotics were resisting the antibiotic streptothricin,
and that this was being passed on to farm workers and
their families by 1984 and the general public by 1985.
Although the drug was withdrawn, the prevalence of
resistant bacteria in 1993 still remained very high. |
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| Genetically engineered crops can be
made to be resistant to anything, including weeds and
pests, indeed this is one their selling points. Unfortunately
what is here being defined as a weed and pest is often
an essential part in the food chain of birds, insects
and other creatures of the wild : pesticide or herbicide
poured over a crop that is resistant to it will kill
these parts of the food chain and so reduce the range
of wild life, i.e. bio-diversity. Because of the presence
of promoters, genetically engineered products may often
be found to be producing much greater quantities of
a substance that would normally be the case, thus making
the produce highly toxic. Because the use of vectors
makes the outcome of any genetic engineering highly
uncertain, nobody can for certain say how such a product
will impact on a human. Only time can tell. |
|
| While medical products of the pharmaceutical
industry are required to be tested over a 15 year period,
GE foods have been able to reach the market place within
months because of the narrow, mechanical test of "substantial
equivalency". The genetic environment of the gene
that has evolved over hundreds of millions of years
is being almost instantaneously replaced with very
little real knowledge as to the long term consequences.
The far less invasive approaches of the Green Revolution
have left our planet far worse off than it could have
been had we concentrated on supporting and enhancing
the skills and traditions of the local farming communities,
rather than making them dependent on the damaging impact
of chemical dependency. |
| |
| Is it that difficult to project a future
in which only a few crops are used around the world;
these are owned by a handful of corporations who are
busily making money from coming up with new ways of
increasing yields on the one hand and countering the
effects of such a sterile approach to food production
on the other. The fact that we have lost most of our
bio-diversity, also known as wildlife, is actually
advantageous, we will be told in advertisements, because
there will now be far less threat to our food supply!
The fact that we shall have even greater incidences
of cancer, asthma, chronic fatigue syndrome and all
those other wonderful diseases that are being accepted
as an integral part of life in the 21st century will
also be presented as a good thing, as sales of remedies
and treatments will increase the bottom lines of pharmaceutical
companies (many of which in any event already enjoy
common ownership with the "life science" companies,
as those who lead the genetic engineering field like
to call their new branch of industry). |
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| Is it entirely accidental that the vast
increases in health disorders amongst children and
adults has coincided with our increased reliance on
chemicals in the food chain: cancer has doubled, asthma
has increased fivefold amongst pre-school children,
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, at last recognised as a genuine
disease, has been labelled "an inevitable by-product
of our age", and our doctors' lists of diseases
and waiting patients grow, while we run out of hospital
spaces. By allowing foods to be so randomly 'genetically
improved' we are creating time bomb of unknown power — it
is not a handful of brave volunteers who will be seeking
to test these new foods, it is entire populations and
their future off-spring that are being put at risk
for the sake of the increased profits of some shareholders
who do not even know what is being done in their name
and whose government is seeking to coerce the planet
to acquiesce (ours in Britain did, but the people stood
up and said 'no'). If this mass experiment were to
go wrong, as it stands at least a 50% chance to, we
would have disaster on hand the likes of which we can
not even begin to contemplate. As we get it wrong in
some very simple areas (for example, deep water wells
for Indian villages: Western aid programmes generously
provided equipment for them, they went too deeply into
poisonous soil and now 3 million Indians, including
many, many children are crippled and made dependent
for life), how much more likely are we to get it wrong
when fiddling with the building blocks of life. |
| |
| Dolly the Sheep is presented as the shining
example of a genetically engineered healthy beast.
No mention is made of the literally thousands of failures
on the way, beasts with heads protruding from their
stomachs and other horrible malformations. And now
we are told that her cells are showing signs of very
premature ageing. Imagine starting Sunday lunch with
GM lamb and leaving the table several days older! If
the article about US beef I have appended is read correctly
then the chances are that with each stake and hamburger
you are indeed doing something towards reducing your
life expectancy and state of health! |
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| If there are those souls who have infinite
faith in a science propelled by the profit motive,
let's label our GM foods so that they can feast on
these while the rest of us select non-GM and organic
foods. At least two farmers in the US tried to label
their produce as not containing a particular genetically
engineered Bt hormone produced by Monsanto. They were
taken to court by Monsanto and lost. That ensured that
nobody else dared tell the world that they had GMO-free
produce to sell. |
| |
| So lets label what does and does not
contain GM, directly or indirectly. We were always
told that GM plant pollen would not travel beyond,
say, 60 feet, and that therefore there was no risk
of cross-pollination with normal or organic crops.
Our government bought this until its own research scientists
found that this pollen could travel over many miles,
up to 100 miles even. Some research is suggesting that
GM pollen has already reached our stratosphere! Pollen
of plants that have been created by tricking nature
could interact with other plants in ways we cannot
and will not ever know. But they could also interact
with insects, that are consumed by birds that form
the food chain all the way into the human gut. The
pessimists say it is too late to save the concept of
organic food. I say that this is our chance to stop
the madness. |
|
| The question often arises why we in
Europe and the rest of the world seem to have woken
up to this threat earlier than you Americans (but still
not before 60% of all our processed food contained
US GM soya). In part this is because you rely for your
bio-diversity on the great expanses of wilderness you
have in the US, whereas we in the crowded rest of the
world rely on our farmers and we therefore show a much
closer interest in what they are doing. But it probably
also has something to do with us not having blind faith
in "government knows best", which seems to
have prevailed in the US and which seems to have included
corporations that perform well in the stock market,
irrespective of how they actually achieve this. I do
believe it is changing now, in Europe we have tended
to be watchful of their activities, again because we
are so tightly packed into our national borders. |
| |
| Let me, for light relief, throw in another
issue that arises when we permit technology surreptitiously
to be introduced into the food chain — food radiation
(with radio-active substances): in a celebrated court
case it was found that meat condemned as unfit for
human consumption in the UK (where radiation is banned)
was exported to Europe (where radiation is permitted),
where it was given radiation treatment, and then sold
back to the UK for human consumption. Radiation made
it impossible to detect the fraud, only mistakes in
the paper work threw up this fraud. Food radiation
is, I believe, permitted in the US — do you know
how fresh, for instance, your already deadly stressed
out meat is? |
|
| We in Britain had to slaughter our entire
cattle herds in order to eliminate "mad cow" disease,
or the fear of it. It was brought about because feed
companies, in order to increase their profits, not
to make food cheaper to the consumer, mixed the offal
and other remnants of slaughtered animals into the
feedstuff of their alive descendants, all of whom where
(and still are) vegetarian herbivores. Is it little
wonder that they (and some of those who ate their flesh)
developed a deadly disease first observed in some of
the remaining cannibals of New Guinea. Your Department
of Agriculture, of the only nation in the West that
permits the feeding raw sewage to your cattle, claims
that the US is BSE free. But you habitually slaughter
your animals younger than in the UK and just before
the age in which the symptoms of BSE begin to show!
And each year 120,000 plus cattle suddenly drop dead,
for no discernible reason. These cattle casualties
are described and written off as victims of SDS, Sudden
Death Syndrome — if I were a meat eater, I would
want to know what SDS really signified and how many
SDS-deceased steaks reached my dinner plate — but
please wait before you make up your minds until you
read the excerpt from the Daily Mail that I have appended. |
| |
| Do you know that McDonald's, that so
quintessentially American eatery, has just announced
that it too is banning in the UK (and Europe?) all
GM products from its dishes. If it accepts that there
are doubts about GM food that might risk the health
of Europeans, why does it not extend the same precautions
to the US? Just about all our supermarkets, food chains
(incl. Pizza Hut, Perfect Pizza, KFC & Burger King)
and big food manufacturers have agreed to eliminate
GM ingredients. |
|
| I have given above the address of a
WebSite which is collecting names for a petition for
Federal Legislation that will require food to be GM
labelled : folks that is not enough, too slow — you
/ we need direct action — picket the supermarkets,
they can only survive by remaining sensitive and responsive
to consumer demands. Boycott certain foods — those
containing soya, for example (which is about 60% of
all produce). Most soya in the US is GModified and
Monsanto provided. Buy shares in Monsanto and make
your shareholder voices heard. Demand from your legislators
that the practice of patenting genes be stopped. Begin
asking the question whether companies can outlive their
usefulness and perhaps should be closed down at some
given point, when they begin to threaten life as we
know it on this planet. |
| |
In the UK we scored a partial victory by succeeding
within 6 months to go up against our government and
to force in legislation that requires the labelling
of all GM foods; we are now battling to have the
numerous foods containing GM derivatives labelled
too. We have also achieved a 5 year moratorium for
the further testing of GM produce. |
| |
| Finally, I list on my second Appendix
some of the names and WebSites of organisations and
individuals who are doing good work in resisting and
co-ordinating resistance to the GM threat to our freedom
to eat whatever we elect to rather than what a bunch
of short-sighted marketing guys decree is good for
us. |
|
| Please let me have your comments and
contributions to this important issue; if you do not
want to hear anything more about it, please let me
know and I shall ensure that you do not receive future
communications on this issue. |
| |
| With very best regards |
| |
| Yours sincerely |
| |
Peter B. Rae
inspired@compuserve.com |
| |
| p.S. Since writing this letter
something else has surfaced in the UK that suggests
that perhaps the role of government in our modern society,
together with economics and commerce without morality,
needs to be re-examined : one of our most respected
Sunday papers, the Observer, recently revealed that
for a number of years our government had been persuaded
by Monsanto to permit the secret release of BST milk
to the general populace (the substance that is now
considered potentially harmful by our government advisers). |
| |
Now comes the outrage : asked to reveal more about
these mass-tests our government has stated that it
cannot do so without the permission of Monsanto as
the information had to be considered proprietary
to them! |
|
| Whose interest does modern government,
in the US and UK in particular, consider it represent?
Those who elect them to administer our countries,
or those who make it possible, through "donations" for
political parties and their individual members, to
have themselves re-elected? Are we, the people, simply
to be ignored between elections, even conspired against,
while those who have the money and machinery can
push their narrow commercial interests and help government
tell us lies via what is euphemistically called "spin-doctoring"? |
| |
I am beginning to see the positive aspect
of the genetic engineering issue — it has to represent
a wake-up call to re-examine economics without morality
and government by subterfuge. The lie of increased
productivity under chemically-based farming methods
is there for all to see, and the dis-connectedness
of modern government becomes more and more apparent
by the day. |
| |
© copyright Peter
B. Rae, 1999, 2002 |
|
APPENDIX 1
More News on the Food Front — this time the
US Beef Industry
(extracted from the Daily Mail of 12 June 1999)
Induced Feeding & Chemical Enhancement
of Cattle
- a very unsavoury method of
cattle breeding has become favoured in the US,
it is so brutal that even hardened cattle-men admit
to finding it appallingly cruel : cattle are, from
age 6—11 months, permanently penned up in
steel pens, called feedlots, 200 per feedlot; these
offer absolutely no shelter, no grass underfoot,
only full exposure to the elements (and plenty
of dust). On one side of each feedlot is a trough
which permits the cattle to feed on herbicide-soaked
grain; the cattle in these feedlots, due to their
diet of grain and certain hormone implants, grow
so enormous that their bodies often can no longer
contain their inner organs, which drop out. To
save on vets bills, cowboys are required to stuff
the organs back in and sew up the cattle.
- a rancher explained — we
get paid by the pound, not by the heifer's figure!
- at least one of the hormones
is known to be seriously cancer inducing in humans
- there are now 42,000 feedlot
ranches in the US, containing about 50% of the
nation's 100 million head of cattle : some farmers
are experimenting with supplementing the grain
/ hormone feeds with cardboard, newspaper, and
sawdust to reduce feeding costs. Cement has been
found to increase weight-growth by 30%!! Other
ranches are experimenting with feeding their cattle
with the manure from chicken sheds and pigpens — the
US is the only Western nation permitting the feeding
of raw manure to cattle.
- since the 1950s US farmers
have been permitted to give their cattle a wide
range of pharmaceuticals — today there are
mainly 6 : 3 are "natural" sex hormones — testosterone,
progesterone and oestraiol-17, and 3 are synthetic
sex hormones — trembolone acetate, zeranol
and melengestrol acetate : like steroids with body
builders, these substances increase rates of growth
and body weight and thus give the rancher increased
value per carcass (by about $75 each), and faster.
|
|
BST (bovine
somatotropin)
- 1 in 6 dairy cows are in the
US injected every two weeks with growth hormones,
a genetically engineered one is BST; research has
found that BST wipes out up to 20% of herds because
the animals' immune system becomes so impaired
that they become vulnerable to severe bladder and
udder infections; their skeletons are so weakened
that those who survive can no longer stand; after
pushed to the limits of their endurance the animals
are then injected with antibiotics to ward off
further infections; these injections are suspected
of promoting the evolution of antibiotic-resistant
microbes which infect humans.
- BST, produced by — yes
you guessed it — Monsanto, has been linked
to cancer in humans : but it does increase milk
production by 25%!
- around 90% of all beef in the
USA comes from cattle which have been fattened
by hormone implants; for pork the figure is 100%
- BST contains high levels of
growth hormone IGF-1 (insuline like growth factor
one) which is strongly suspected of being a carcinogen
: a new study found that pre-menopausal women with
high levels of IGF-1 in their bodies experienced
a seven-fold increase in breast cancer and men
a four-fold increase in prostate cancer
- Farmers who labelled their
produce as "BST-free" have been successfully
sued by — Monsanto : the official in the FDA
who drew up the labelling guidelines which prevent
farmers from labelling their produce thus used
to work for — Monsanto.
- The European ban on BST is
due to end next year, but is likely to be extended
: it is expected that Monsanto will urge the US
Gov. to complain to the World Trade Organisation
|
|
SANE VOICES
- Ronnie Cummins, director of
the US Pure Food Campaign — "some really
terrifying things are happening in the US Food
Industry — but little research is being carried
out and very little reporting on television and
in the papers"; "one reason the U.S. does
not want to be compelled (by the Europeans, Japanese,
and other ignorant foreigners) from labelling hormonal
beef is because they know that consumers in that
market will reject such produce, and the US consumer
would start asking why their produce was not being
labelled too" (see "THREATENING USA",
below).
- Dr. Samuel Epstein, professor
of environmental medicine at the Illinois Medical
Centre in Chicago — warned that confidential
industry reports to the FDA have confirmed deeply
disturbing high levels of hormone residues in US
beef : some research suggests that two hamburgers
made from this beef eaten by an 8 year old boy
would increase female hormones in him by 10% :
Dr. Epstein warns that lifelong exposure to meat
with high natural and synthetic sex hormones poses
serious risk of breast and reproductive cancers,
incidences of which in the US have increased twofold
since 1950; premature sexual developments in young
girls is also attributed to this.
- European Union Scientific Committee
on Veterinary Measures (EUSCVM)—just published
research findings on hormones in meat : at least
one, oestradiol, has been declared a "complete
carcinogen" and five others need to be studied
further: because of this the European's have resisted
US demand that their beef be exempt from labelling
which is now resulting in the US taking punitive
measures against European imports.
- the EUSCVM also tested so-called
hormone-free meet from the US and found hormones
in 12%, including a substance banned in the US;
US beef labelled "steroid-free" is regularly
found to contain high levels of hormonesBST contains
high levels of growth hormone IGF-1 (insuline like
growth factor one) which is strongly suspected
of being a carcinogen : a new study found that
pre-menopausal women with high levels of IGF-1
in their bodies experienced a seven-fold increase
in breast cancer and men a four-fold increase in
prostate cancer.
- the use of hormones were banned
in Europe in 1988 because it was felt that farmers
could not be trusted to use only small, regulated
doses of hormones : a recent test on slaughtered
US cattle showed that almost half had been illegally
treated, making them potentially extremely dangerous
to consumers. Concern over the effects of such
chemical pollution is focusing particularly on
pre-pubescent children. The mighty American beef
lobby denounced the Europeans for being "protectionist" and "in
restraint of trade" and persuaded the Clinton
Administration to complain to the World Trade Organisation — who
upheld the complaint and gave the Europeans a deadline
to lift their ban — which has now passed (and
the US will be taking the above mentioned punitive
action against European imports).
- Marshall Martin, agricultural
economist at Indiana's Purdue University, predicts
that there is no going back on genetically modified
(GM) food, that Europe will eventually have to
capitulate — "it is impossible today, in
the US, to eat a slice of pizza that does not contain
at least 2, if not 3, different GM foodstuffs".
|
|
APPENDIX 2
Websites of Genetic Engineering Oriented Organisations
|
| |
|
|
| The originator of this letter is
one of those rare human beings who has led such a full
and varied life that he is able to bring personal experience
to most situations he writes or talks about. As a former
international banker, this deep-feeling and -thinking
man brings an insightful perspective to commercial
and financial activities, nationally and internationally.
He believes that we are all victims of a reality that
has become so complex that most people can only deal
with it by concentrating on their small patch and so
lose sight of the bigger picture. He is passionate
about ensuring that people are treated as intelligent
beings and are presented with the fullest possible
facts about what is shaping their present and futures.
He believes that genuine freedom of choice is a fundamental
human right in extension of that most precious of all
gifts, free will. He wants access to well presented
information to be made a global priority. |
|
