Does the name John Hillman sound familar from an earlier post? Looks like
ebay and Iraq are not the only things under a concerted attack this week.
Mike Miller
>Subject: "organic farming poses health risks..."
>hello, all.
>
>my mother recently sent me this article from some BBC
>online service (sorry, i don't know the specific
>address):
>
>
>
>>Scientist raises organic concerns
>GM foods have provoked a widespread debate
>
>A leading Scottish scientist has warned that organic
>farming poses considerable risks to human health.
>Professor John Hillman, director of the world-renowned
>Scottish Crop Research Institute (SCRI), also said the
>debate on GM food had been "obscured" by unhelpful
>language.
>His comments are contained in the SCRI's annual report
>released on Tuesday.
>Its Director's Report is regarded as one of the most
>comprehensive yearly reviews of global and UK trends
>influencing agricultural, biological and
>environmentalsciences.
>Professor Hillman writes that organic farming poses
>
>considerable risks to human health, as well as the
>
>heavily-publicised potential benefits.
>"Organic farming raises risks of faecal contamination
>not
>only of food but also of waterways, food poisoning,
>high
>levels of natural toxins and allergens, contamination
>by
>copper and sulphur-containing fungicides, production
>of
>diseased food, low productivity, and creation of
>reservoirs
>of pests and diseases," he says.
>His report calls for "unhelpful and unjustified
>language"
>to be ditched and for lessons to be learned from the
>wholeGMfood debate.
>Debate 'obscured' "Cars, cigarettes, stepladders and
>playing sports are
>dangerous - eating GM food is not.
>"Deliberately pejorative language is obscuring the
>debate
>and encouraging people to pre-judge the issues before
>
>they have heard all the facts.
>"Obvious lessons to be drawn from the GM debate
>include
>the requirement for wide consultation with the support
>of
>authoritative literature, effective and non-pejorative
>food labelling and testing of all foodstuffs, research
>
>to address gaps in current knowledge and absolute
>transparency and open access provided to the public
>andpoliticians."
>Professor Hillman continues: "In Third World countries
>more
>than 70% of income is spent on food, and production
>
>perturbations caused by pests, diseases, weeds and bad
>
>weather lead to starvation and even suicides.
>'Profound requirement'
>"There is a profound requirement for improving
>agricultural
>productivity and efficiency, and biotechnological
>approaches, including GM crops, are real options."
>The Scottish Crop Research Institute, based at
>Invergowrie,
>is a major international centre for research into
>
>agricultural, horticultural and industrial crops.
>Last week, a UN conference in Montreal agreed on rules
>governing the trade in genetically-modified food
>products.
>The Biodiversity Protocol states that shipments of GM
>
>commodities should bear labels saying they "may
>contain"
>genetically-modified organisms and are not intended
>for
>intentional introduction into the environment.
>In Scotland, much of the debate has revolved around
>the
>Aberdeen scientist Dr Arpad Puztai, who said GM foods
>maybe
>dangerous to human health. His experiments in which
>he fed
>genetically-modified potatoes to rats were later
>discredited.
To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest".
To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"subscribe sanet-mg-digest".
All messages to sanet-mg are archived at:
http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Mar 12 2000 - 14:00:23 EST