Genetically Modified Propaganda

Genetically Modified Propaganda

The UK Environment Secretary, Owen Patterson, today is to announce that genetically modified (GM) foods are "safe, proven and beneficial" and that the UK should get behind the biotechnology. Claims of economic and environmental benefits, that GM crops will allegedly provide to do not stand up to rigid scrutiny however.

If the minister quotes from research which has been carried out by biotechnology companies who stand to gain the most, then how can we trust the research? Is all-knowing 'science' also being manipulated to satisfy the corporate agenda of biotech companies? 

An evidence-based document, a compilation of over 500 scientific papers, GMO Myths and Truths (June 2012) challenges biotech claims that GM crops yield better and more nutritious crops, minimise pesticide use and are absolutely safe for the environment and for consumption.

You can read this document here

A former proponent of GM who at one time sang the praises of biotechnology has taken a u-turn and challenges the notion that GM is safe, proven and beneficial. Thierry Vrain, a former research scientist at Agriculture Canada. says he started paying more attention to published studies from Europe (many from prestigious, peer-reviewed scientific journals). Vrain asks, for example, if the proteins in GM crops such as corn and soya have been tested for toxicity or as potential allergens? He quotes animal studies which show rats are dying from being fed GM crops.

The insertion of a foreign gene into a genome can create damaged and rogue proteins, he maintains, based on the flawed hypothesis that a single gene codes for a single protein. Proteomics is the study of the entire compliment of proteins which make up a cell. The sequence of amino acids (which are the primary structures which make up protein), is dictated by the nucleotide sequence of the gene coding for that particular protein. So when you introduce a foreign gene into the sequence it creates a new protein, in fact a rogue protein (one that doesn't exist in nature) whose consequences are unknowable.

You can find more about Vrain's revelations here

The effect of these rogue proteins in local ecosystems cannot be determined by trialing a crop in a field for a few years. The implications of what might occur when such a protein is transferred into the wider environment is impossible to ascertain and entirely unpredictable. Is GM is therefore a mass experiment motivated enitely by profit.?

Of central concern is the manufacture of monopoly on GM seeds - which would allow the patenting of life-forms for the first time - by transnational corporations like Monsanto . The Farmer Assurance Provision (Section 735 of a 2013 spending bill (HR933) in the US) bars federal courts from banning the planting or sale of GM crops. Written in collaboration with Monsanto reps, the Monsanto Protection Act as it has been dubbed , shows the influence of corporate agendas on government leading to the widespread notion of monopolization of food control. The agrochemical industry has condescendingly responded that the public are being emotional. Monsanto bullies farmers, and has been accused of corporate greenwash.

They use the carrot that starvation in the Third World could be alleviated through GM technology, avoiding the socio-economic reasons why that poverty exists in the first place. The public have been up in arms over genetically modified Frankenfoods from the word go. And when politicians get into bed with corporate agendas the uestions remains as to who they really serve!

http://www.anh-europe.org/campaigns/say-no-to-gm
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/43074
http://www.gmfreeireland.org/action/
http://www.organicconsumers.org/monsanto/
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/agriculture/problem/genetic-engineering/