GM firms are the only winners at food talks (EU)
Geneticist proposes 'third way' on GM crops (India/ US)
On Golden Rice ( US)
GM firms are the only winners at food talks Rory Carroll in Rome The Guardian Weekly 20-6-2002, page 4 The world food summit ended in recrimination last week, branded a waste of time
for everyone except the United States, which successfully promoted genetically
modified crops as a solution to famine.
The United Nations denied that the meeting in Rome had been ineffective, even
through Western governments snubbed it, the leaders of developing countries were
unhappy, and the delegates disagreed on strategies to avert malnutrition and
famine.
Environmental and agricultural groups accused the US of steamrollering the
summit into endorsing biotechnology as a tool to combat poverty and hunger by
approving without dissent a document calling for "research into new
technologies, including biotechnology".
"The US played very hard and succeeded. They now have the moral authority to use
genetically modified food for aid purposes," Fernando Almansa of Oxfam said. He
hoped their defeat would shock opponents of GM food into mobilising for the UN
summit on sustainable development in Johannesburg in August, which will consider
the conclusions reached in Rome.
The US delegation, led by the agriculture secretary, Ann Veneman, made no secret
that its priority was to promote the wider use of biotechnology, which is
dominated by US firms.
"Biotechnology has tremendous potential to develop products that can be more
suited to areas of the world where there is persistent hunger," Ms Veneman said.
"There is no food safety issue whatsoever."
Another delegate was more forthright: "We're here to sell biotech, and that's
what we've done."
Biotechnology's advocates say GM crops with improved yields, resistance to
drought and tolerance of salt could ease food shortages in stricken areas.
Critics say they could destroy biodiversity and force poor farmers to buy seed
from US corporations.
Fred Kalibwani, a Zimbabwean ecology activist who attended the parallel
conference of NGOs, said that patented GM seed in effect placed food security in
the hands of a few corporations. "This will be tragic for Africa in the next few
years," he said.
Jacques Diouf, director general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, the
host, said it was a success because it reaffirmed the pledge of the 1996 food
summit to halve world hunger by 2015.
But little headway has been made in the past six years: more than 800 million
people are still hungry; famine is looming in southern Africa; and the FAO's
plea at the conference of an extra $23bn a year for agricultural development aid
was ignored.
Only two of the 74 heads of state or government present were from the West. The
British delegate did not even address the conference.
The European Union aid commissioner, Poul Nielson, accused the organisers of
trying to build an empire rather than tackling the real problem of hunger.
Some UN officials said the $2.3m the event cost would have been better spent on
grain for the poor. John Vidal The Guardian Weekly 26-4-2001, page 11 The growing world population will only be fed adequately if governments adopt
"people friendly" farming methods that include GM technology, one of the world's
leading scientists and humanitarians said last week.
Professor M F Swaminathan, a geneticist credited with being the father of
India's green revolution -
which prevented food shortages and famine in the post-war years - offered a
"third way" to warring proponents and opponents of GM technology. He called for
governments and scientists to back sensitive farming methods that would keep
people on the land and avoid social or ecological harm. He said genetically
modified crops did "have a place" in the future and could work well alongside
organic systems of farming.
Professor Swaminathan's vision of world agriculture - which must cater for an
estimated 2bn more mouths within 20 years - suggested that the corporate GM
model of farming would not benefit the poorest. He urged governments to provide
more public funding of gene technology and called for community participation in
science.
He told an international conference at Britain's leading GM research
organisation, the John Innes Centre in Norwich, Norfolk: "If you want an
inclusive society you must go to the poorest person and ask if they will gain
anything from technological development. Farming cannot be left to the control
of a few multinational companies. The poor, who are most of the world's
population, need fair and free trade. There must be ethics and equity in
farming."
Prof Swaminathan is developing
mixed GM and organic farming methods at his institute near Calcutta, where
scientists are trying to develop rice, tobacco and other crops that are tolerant
to salt water. He is backed by the influential Rockefeller Foundation in New
York, which has also called for a "new green revolution" that includes GM foods.
According to United Nations estimates, world food requirements will increase by
50% within 25 years and will have to be produced from less land with less water,
fewer chemicals and less labour. Many governments see no option but to follow
the corporate GM route which promises extra yields.
But several scientists at the conference said GM food production in developing
countries was a more difficult issue than in Europe or the United States.
"Tropical countries face more complex issues, including patent rights, the
freedom of companies to operate and specific risk assessment," said Ana
Sittenfeld, a geneticist at the University of Costa Rica.
At a separate meeting organised by British environment groups, some of the
world's poorest farmers testified that GM foods had no place in feeding growing
populations and might even destabilise societies. Paul Brown The Guardian Weekly 15-2-2001, page 5 Claims by the biotech industry and some United States politicians that
genetically engineered "golden rice" would save the sight of 500,000 children a
year are exaggerated, according to the Rockefeller Foundation, which is funding
the rice's development.
The project, which has been used by supporters of genetically modified
crops as a justification for the technology, appears likely to generate only a
fraction of the additional vitamin A intake it promised. Vitamin A helps prevent
eye disease.
If consumers ate 300g (11oz) of the GM rice a day - the average consumption of
an Asian adult - it would provide only 8% of the required daily intake of the
vitamin, according to independent scientists.
An adult would have to eat 9kg of cooked rice (the equivalent of 3.75kg of
uncooked rice) to satisfy the required daily intake, and a pregnant woman would
need twice that amount.
The Rockefeller Foundation says that claims for golden rice have "gone
too far". Syngenta, the agribusiness company that owns many of the patents on
the rice, has in the past claimed that a single month of marketing delay would
cause 50,000 children to go blind.
The deficiency is mainly found in India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Vietnam,
Thailand and the Philippines where the lack of vitamin A in a rice diet causes
childhood blindness and up to 1m deaths a year. Adding beta-carotene to rice,
which the body turns into vitamin A, turns it yellow, hence the name golden
rice.
The rice's development has provided a powerful propaganda tool for the GM
industry. The then US president Bill Clinton said last year: "If we could get
more of this golden rice . . . out to the developing world, it could save 4,000
lives a day, people that are malnourished and dying."
Several bio-tech firms, including Syngenta and Monsanto, were credited with
licensing patents on golden rice that would allow the technology to "be made
available free of charge for humanitarian uses in any developing nation".
Charlie Kronick of Greenpeace said: "It is clear that the GM industry has been
making false claims about golden rice. It is nonsense to think anyone would or
could eat this much rice, and there is still no proof that it
can provide any significant vitamin benefits anyway.
In response to a report by Vandana Shiva, an Indian campaigner against GM foods,
Rockefeller Foundation spokesman Gordon Conway said: "We do not consider golden
rice to be the solution to the vitamin A deficiency problem. Rather it provides
an excellent complement to fruits, vegetables and animal products in diets, and
to various fortified foods and vitamin supplements."
He added: "I agree with Dr Shiva that the public relations uses of golden rice
have gone too far. or or Geneticist proposes 'third way' on GM crops
On Golden Rice...
GM rice promoters' claims 'have gone too far'
Adding Vitamin A offers no quick fix to cure blindness