RWOLFSON; 2 articles
Daniel D. Worley (dan.worley@icepr.com)
Fri, 16 Jan 1998 06:23:21 -0400
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>Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 23:15:49 -0400
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>From: Richard Wolfson <rwolfson@concentric.net>
>Subject: 2 articles
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>WILL BIOTECHNOLOGY FEED THE WORLDS POOR?
>By: Tom Campbell, Lecturer in Environmental Studies, Development Studies
>Centre, Kimmage Manor. Dublin. Republic of Ireland.
>
>One of the biggest myths perpetuated by the biotechnology industry is that
>genetically engineered crops are likely to provide a solution to world
>hunger. Companies like ICI Seeds, Britainís largest seeds merchant, proclaim
>that biotechnology will be the most reliable and environmentally acceptable
>way to secure the worldís food supplies .
>
>Elsewhere, executives from the Monsanto Corporation have gone as far as to
>promote themselves as part of the solution to the worldís food and
>environmental problems: ìsustainable agriculture is only possible only with
>biotechnology and imaginative chemistryî , they claim in a 1990 article
>entitled ëPlanetary Patriotismí Similarly, a recent advertisement from
>Monsanto depicts maize growing in the desert with the caption: ìWill it take
>a miracle to solve the worlds hunger problems?î. Implicit in these
>messages is that to oppose biotechnology is to reject the best hope for a
>solution to world hunger and to perpetuate the suffering of starving
>children.
>
>Despite the evidence that genetically engineered crops may provide higher
>yields in the short term (it remains to be seen whether they do so in the
>long term) there are a number of good reasons why these arguments simply do
>not stand up to analysis. On the contrary there is plenty of evidence to
>suggest that biotechnology will more than likely reduce food and livelihood
>security for the worldís poor. Here are six reasons why biotechnology and
>food security can never be compatible:
>
>1) Biotechnology can never be a cure for hunger - Famines are not caused by
>lack of food but by lack of access to food and alternative sources of income
>in times of crisis. There are ample reserves of food in the world today yet
>the numbers of malnourished run into hundreds of millions. Increasing
>agricultural production (even assuming that this is possible through
>biotechnology) whilst leaving the structural causes of poverty and hunger
>unaddressed is a recipe not for feeding the world but for continuing to
>starve sizeable numbers within it.
>
>2) Biotechnology creates dependency - Biotechnology goes hand in hand with
>intensive agriculture, with single crops in large fields. The majority of
>Third World farmers are small-scale, farming a variety of crops. By switching
>to genetically engineered seeds they have to change their practices and
>become dependent on the companies which provide the ëpackageí of seeds,
>herbicides, fertilisers, irrigation systems, etc. In India, farmers using
>Monsantoís genetically engineered seeds pay an extra $50 - $65 per acre as a
>ëtechnical feeí over and above the price of seed. Farmers who do business
>with Monsanto must sign a contract stating that they will not buy chemicals
>from any one else.
>
> 3) Biotech Companies can not be trusted - There is nothing in the
>environmental record of Corporations like Du Pont or Monsanto, who are
>leading proponents of biotechnology, to suggest that they should be trusted
>now. These same companies have always promoted non-sustainable, industrial,
>socially inequitable agriculture. Monsanto remains one of the largest
>polluters in the United States. The company was responsible for 5% of the 5.7
>billion pounds of toxic chemicals released in to the US environment in 1992
>
>4) Biotechnology reduces diversity - Biotechnology reduces diversity by
>promoting certain species over others, so reducing the genetic pool even
>further. We are already massively over-dependent on a handful of food crop
>varieties. Genuine sustainable agriculture on the other hand promotes
>multi-cropping and companion planting as the best resistance to pests,
>viruses and changes in climate. Traditional varieties of subsistence food
>crops are often more nutritious than the high-yield varieties promoted by the
>agro-chemical and seed companies.
>
>5) Biotechnology encourages ëBiopiracyí - Business interests and chemical
>companies use research into unusual genes from plant, animal and even human
>genes, as a means of getting control over local genetic resources - once
>they have manipulated that gene they reinforce control, and earn massive
>profits, by ëpatentingí. Many developing countries were opposed to this at
>GATT/World Trade Organisation negotiations and continue to express concern
>at the way ëtrade related intellectual property rightsí (TRIPS) work in
>favour of the industrialised countries. The creation of monopoly rights to
>biodiversity utilisation can have serious implications for erosion of
>national and community rights to biodiversity and devalue indigenous
>knowledge systems . Sustainable food and livelihood security in the Third
>World is likely to be weakened rather than strengthened as a result .
>
>6) The worldís starving do not make good customers - What evidence is there
>to show that 20 years of biotechnology research, a billion dollars of
>expenditure and countless hours of scientific labour has benefited the
>worlds hungry or resource poor farmers in the South? Science-based
>biotechnology research has so far tended to benefit the high external input
>agriculture of the North. Most biotech products have been aimed at consumer
>niche markets in the North - Calgeneís $25 million ëFlavr Savrí tomatoes
>for example, whose only advantage over competitors is three - five daysí
>extra shelf life. A fraction of the money that has been poured into
>biotechnology research could have a far greater impact if it was invested in
>strengthening and promoting the huge variety of sustainable and alternative
>agriculture possibilities that already exist in the world.
>
>___________________________________________________
>
>Genetic Engineering: Scientific Elitism and Industrial Interests
>
>One of the problematic precepts of the science of agriculture is its
>fallacious syllogism: that an increase in yield means increase in the
>quality of life of farmers. No wonder why most accounted progress in
>agriculture gives more premium on the improvement of crop and livestock
>than on the lives of those who rear them--the farmers, the ever-generous
>"parents" of all food-eating people of this planet. Of course, currently
>there is genetic engineering applied to agriculture, which addresses only
>the issue of productivity: of how food can be produced or reproduced in a
>much efficient manner given a limited time and space. No wonder why, depite
>all the developments and advancements in that so-called science, farmers
>remain a poor and technology-accepting sector. Although, this should not
>discount the fact that various forms of technological resistance do exist
>in many farming communities--usually ranging from subtle to outright violent.
>
>That the syllogism is fallacious is just one. The other precept that is
>more problematic, and poses grave threat not just to farmers but to the
>whole human history, is that the science of profit should take legitimate
>control of almost the entire affairs of the world. The extent to which
>profit motive becomes the rule, rather than exception, in the pursuit of
>knowledge cannot be more pronounced. From farming to medicine to making
>tomato ketchup to selecting potatoes for french fries, both food producers
>and consumers have become by default cuddlers of the transnational
>corporations's indefatigable tinkering with nature. By establishing
>lordship over the life industry, scientists and transnational companies
>were able to forge an unchallenged global order that ushers to them none
>but monumental profits. This, done at the expense of environment,
>biodiversity, culture and people.
>
>In relevance to the TRIPs renegotiation next year, all opponents of genetic
>engineering especially those who care for the plight of food-producing,
>developing countries like the Philippines, should be able to declare in
>full resolve the following calls:
>
>NO to genetic engineering, NO to patents on all life forms (including
>products, derivatives and processes associated with genetic manipulation).
>And as corollaries, NO to the elitism of science and submission to
>commercial interests, NO to the manipulation of transnational corporations.
>Especially, END the imperialism on food!
>
>Opposition to genetic engineering (and other agricultural biotechnology
>processes) and patenting of all life forms is particularly necessary in
>respect of the following concerns:
>
>· it undermines local efforts of farmers in increasing farm productivity,
>disempowers and further marginalizes them specifically on food production
>and security, as the industry is fast claiming these domains;
>
>· it perpetuates global oligopolistic control of transnational companies on
>food system, health, science and industry--undermining the peoples right to
>choose and the right to be informed of the risks associated with
>genetically manipulated products;
>
>· it reduces political leverage of the farming sector in their fight for
>land ownership, protection of biodiversity, promotion of environmental
>security and agricultural sustainability;
>
>· it limits access to otherwise locally-available, responsibly-shared
>products, knowledge, processes and both biological and genetic materials
>derived from such life forms as plants, animals and humans;
>
>The issue of genetic engineering cannot discount the social and cultural
>costs shouldered by the basic sectors of most developing worlds, costs
>mostly unacounted in the march towards the so-called scientific progress.
>The lure of ego worship coupled with fat pay makes many scientists and
>transnationals brothers in arms. When cloaked under the guise of adressing
>potential famine, their conspiracy becomes more deplorable. Scientists and
>TNCs are fast redefining the essence of being--what to aspire for, how and
>why. They are also redefining a standard of living--like what to eat, wear,
>how to live, think, die, etc., the list goes on. They are capable too of
>overhauling the general framework of knowledge, what it entails, how it
>should be generated, from where.
>
>Scientists, along with the TNCs, often thought they were gods. And that
>gods should interfere with world affairs: from determining the right size
>of tomato (for making ketchup), to the ideal amount of milk that a hapless
>cow should produce in one day as a standard of industrial efficiency. They
>are not the gods that most of us know.
>
>Indeed science can create its own facts and produce its own proofs for a
>brainwashing truth, but it is not what humanity deserves. Genetic
>engineering whether it is science or not (but it is brainwashing truth), is
>not what humanity deserves. Humanity deserves the wisdom (and not just
>knowledge) that co-exists with the natural laws of the cosmos, the progress
>that sits well with the people, the science that charts human history not
>destruction.
>
>vlady rivera
>MASIPAG/Farmer-Scientist Partnership for Development
>Aurora Bldg. Apt C
>9379 Lopez Avenue
>Los Banos, Laguna
>4031 Philippines
>
>
>_________________________________________________________
>Richard Wolfson, PhD
>Consumer Right to Know Campaign,
>for Mandatory Labelling and Long-term
>Testing of all Genetically Engineered Foods,
>500 Wilbrod Street
>Ottawa, ON Canada K1N 6N2
>email: rwolfson@concentric.net
>
>Our website, http://www.natural-law.ca/genetic/geindex.html
>contains more information on genetic engineering.
>
>To receive regular news on genetic engineering and this
>campaign, please send an email message with 'subscribe GE'
>to rwolfson@concentric.net for details. To unsubscribe, send
>the message "unsubscribe"
>__________________________________________________________
>__________________________________________________________
>
>
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