a big
to ge / gm food......the involvement of corporations in the decisions the british goverment makes and has made regarding gm foods is quite literally unbelievable. only in times of intense public pressure have they taken what most would percieve to be the sensible stance on this controversial subject.
they did try to act on behalf of corps like monsanto and pass a bill which dictated that no packaging warnings had to be displayed regarding whether or not foodstuffs were gm or not.......that didnt go through, but if a foodstuff is pre-processed in any way, for example an instant meal, or a tin of sweetcorn, then the law states that a warning of gm content does not have to be displayed !!
in addition, bristish academic establishments are provided grants from both governemnt and industry. unsurprisingly, an extrememly large and obviously biased proportion of the money goes toward ge / gm.
in 1999 government funding into the agricltural applications of biotechnology amounted to £52m, while funding for organic farming totalled just £1.7m. in the same year, the govermnet allocated £13m to 'improving the profile of the biotech industry', and also £15m to help british researchers build up gene libraries which can be commercialised by biotech companies.
(there are parallells elsewhere also, this isnt isolated - five times as much money is spent in british universities on research into oil and gas as on research into renewable sources of energy. not only does this strengthen the positions of these industries against their alternatives, (which often conflict with other government aims - e.g. reduced carbon emissions), but also directly establishes an inverse relationship between research needs and research funds. emerging industries such as that for renewable energy requires a significantly greater amount of research as it nears its take off phase than oil and gas extraction, already a mature industry.
and so the result? a significant distortion of the research agenda.
if you could even begin to comprehend the proportion of representatives that hold places on government advisory bodies for matters such as ge / gm, you can start to see the sheer scale of conflict of interest. but the average british householder doesnt even know these boards exist, let alone what they advise on, and who they consist of.
we must remember the underlying reasons why there has been a move toward gm food in the last few years.
its not becuase of the wondrous scientific impact, nor is it to provide a bigger and better piece of fruit for the consumer.
the dominant reason is to make more money for the food manufacturers.
the largest kind of gm activity involves modifying the genetic make up of plants to make them resistant to pesticides.
a pesticide resistant crop will be complete, strong, and hence profitable.
but the food will also contain traces of pesticides. and sometimes alot more than just 'traces' :
in april 97, just before the general election, the conservative government quietly agreed to raise the permitted levels of a chemical called glyphosate in soya beans destined for human consumption. the decision was an extraordinary one, not only because the permitted levels of chemical residues are usually reduced over time rather than raised, but also because this particular one was raised by 20,000 percent, or 200 times !!
glysophate is an organic phosphate, and the active ingredient of roundup, the worlds best selling herbicide, manufactured by monsanto.....
many scientists have drawn a direct correlation between increased pesticide residues and a type of cancer called non-hodgkins lymphoma (nhl).
wrt human ge, however, my biggest concern is the patentability of the human gene sequence.
on 16th july 1997, meps (members of european paliament) voted in strasbourg on a directive. the directive on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions.
scientists argued that the patenting of genes would discourage research by removing financial incentives, and by restricting academic freedom. they (imo quite rightly) argued that the directive only suceeds in threatening the very basis of scientific research - free access to material and freedom to pursue promising lines of enquiry.
meps had defied the european comission for the first time in history in 1995 by rejecting the directive. over the next couple of years various amendments were made to the directive
when the directive was resubmitted, corporations launched the biggest lobbying effort in the eus history. smithkline beecham alone spent 30 million ecus on its campaign. they, along with other corporations also pursued a stretegy rarely used outside the us - they went directly to an organisation called the gig - the genetic interest group - a group of organisations that represent the interest of victims of genetic disorders. in the early 90's, a gig director, alastair kent stated 'there is something fundamentally wrong with a corporation or individual having ownership over parts of a human being.'
however, by march 1007, when the new draft was being considered, his name appeared on a pamphlet entitled 'patents for life'...the pamphlet read 'meps must vote to pass the gene patenting directive into law as soon as possible. or else you wioll have to explain to families how it was that you had the opportunity to create significant progress in the search for cures, but you chose not to take that step' like the biotech companies, the pamphlet argued that these corporations would not invest in genetic research unless the profits accrued to them.
on the morning of the vote, the meps arrived at parliament in strasbourg to be greeted by alastair kent, and 12 wheelchair bound people waering t-shirts with the slogan 'patents for life', protetsing that they were about to denied tha chance of a cure. several meps were affected by the sight, later admitting that it influenced their voting decision.
and so the directive was passed. and only after it was passed did several meps learn that the gig had been receiving expenses and 'gifts in kind' from smithkline beecham.
the mep's did however manage to introduce a number of important ammendments, whose purpose was to protect hospitals, reserachers, human rights and the envuironment. one by one these were either dropped or diluted by the ec and the council of ministers.
life is now patentable in the european union
if anyone in the uk wants to know more about the uk goverment involvement with food corporations, (or any other part of industry) then george monbiots book 'captive state' should prove very interesting reading
