Corporate Push for GMO Food Puts Independent Science in Jeopardy

Friday, December 7, 2012 by The Asian Age
by Vandana Shiva

Science is considered science when it is independent, when it has integrity and when it speaks the truth about its search. It was the integrity, independence and sovereignty of science that drew me and propelled me to study physics.

Today, independent science is threatened with extinction. While this is true in every field, it is the field of food and agriculture that I am most concerned about.

At the heart of the food and agriculture debate are genetically modified organisms, also referred to as GMOs. The agrochemical industry’s new avatar is as the GMO industry. According to the industry, GMOs are necessary to remove hunger and are safe.

But evidence from all independent scientists has established that GMOs do not contribute to food security. The UN-sponsored International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) report — written by 400 scientists after a research of three to four years — concluded that there is no evidence that GMOs increase food security. The Union of Concerned scientists concluded in its report, “A Failure to Yield”, that in the US, genetic engineering had not increased the yield. “The GMO Emperor Has No Clothes” — a Global Citizens’ report on the state of GMOs based on field research across the world — also found that genetic engineering has not increased yields. Yet, the propaganda continues that GMOs are the only solution to hunger because GMOs increase yields.

The Supreme Court of India appointed an independent Technical Expert Committee (TEC) to advise it on issues of biosafety. The committee has some of India’s most eminent scientists, including Dr Imran Siddiqui, director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, and Dr P.S. Ramakrishnan, India’s leading biodiversity expert and professor emeritus at the Jawaharlal Nehru University.

One would have expected the government to accept the recommendations of this eminent panel and to throw its weight behind the integrity and independence of science.

The most effective road to reducing hunger and malnutrition is to intensify land use in terms of biodiversity and ecological processes of renewal of soil fertility. Biodiverse ecological farms increase food and nutrition output per acre.

Instead, the government is throwing its weight behind the industry and its fraudulent claims. The Centre has joined the industry in opposing the expert committee’s report recommending moratorium on open field trial of GM crops for 10 years. Responding to a direct query from a bench presided over by Justice Swatanter Kumar and Justice S.J. Mukhopadaya, Attorney General G.E. Vahanvati, appearing for the Centre, said that the Centre does not accept the recommendations of the TEC. With the industry also filing objections to the report, the court directed the expert committee to give a final report after considering objections by various parties.

Stressing on the need to introduce GM crops, the Centre has said it would not be able to meet the first millennium development goal (MDG) of cutting the number of hungry people by half without such technologies. A moratorium of 10 years would take the country 20 years back in scientific research, it added.

These are fallacious arguments. Only two per cent of the GMO soy in the US is eaten by humans. The rest is used as biofuel to run cars and as animal feed. More GMOs do not mean more food.

The most effective road to reducing hunger and malnutrition is to intensify land use in terms of biodiversity and ecological processes of renewal of soil fertility. Biodiverse ecological farms increase food and nutrition output per acre.

The real scientific need for India and the world is to do research on agroecology, on how biodiversity and agro-ecosystems can produce more food while using lesser resources.

In the chemical industrial paradigm, seed and soil are empty containers to add toxic chemicals and genes to, and water is limitless. Industrial agriculture is destroying the natural capital on which food security depends.

The industrial agriculture and GMO paradigm has no understanding of the millions of soil organisms that produce soil fertility, the thousands of crop species that feed us, the amazing work of pollinators like bees and butterflies. And because ecological interactions that produce food are a black hole in the GMO paradigm, the impact of the release of GMOs in the environment is also a black hole. Independent science is vital to fill the gaps in knowledge about the ecology of food production and the ecology of biosafety. This is the knowledge gap that the TEC and independent scientists everywhere are trying to fill.

All independent research on safety indicates that GMOs have serious biosafety issues. This is why we have a UN biosafety protocol.

Beginning with Hungarian-born biochemist and nutritionist Dr Arpad Putzai and continuing with French scientist Dr Seralini, the GMO industry and its lobbyists assault every independent scientist whose research shows that GMOs have risks. Dr Putzai’s research, commissioned by the UK government, showed that rats fed with GMO potatoes had shrunken brains, enlarged pancreas and damaged immunity. Dr Putzai was hounded out of his lab and a gag order was put on him.

The publication of a paper in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology “Long Term Toxicity of a Roundup Herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant GM Maize” by Dr Seralini et al (2012) has generated intense debate on the safety or otherwise of Monsanto the devil’s GM maize NK603.

The European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility (ENSSER) welcomes Dr Seralini’s study. I joined 120 scientists to sign a letter — Seralini and Science: An Open Letter — supporting Dr Seralini’s study.

Independent science is vital to fill the gaps in knowledge about the ecology of food production and the ecology of biosafety.

Russia and Kazakhstan have since halted imports of NK603 maize and, more recently, the Kenyan Cabinet has issued a directive to stop the import of GM foods due to inadequate research done on GMOs and lack of scientific evidence to prove the safety of the food.

This precautionary approach is what India’s Supreme Court-appointed TEC is calling for.

Citizens of California had put up Proposition 37 in the recent elections for something as simple as the “Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food” by having a label on GMO foods. This is recognised as a citizen’s right in Europe and now in India. But the California vote was defeated by industry spending — big food industry players are paying big bucks to battle California’s GMO labelling initiative. According to reports, they are spending as much as $1 million a day on false and misleading advertising.

If citizens don’t have the right to know and scientists don’t have the freedom to speak the truth, we are creating societies that are dangerous — both in terms of loss of democratic freedom and in terms of risking biosafety.

Independent scientists, along with the bees and biodiversity of our plants and seeds, could well become a species threatened with extinction if we do not stop the GMO drone.

Opposition to HR 3590 is Not Only Drawn Down Partisan Lines

by spiderlegs

OK, I'm getting pretty sick of the lazy classification of all opposition to the Health Care Reform Bill as strictly Right WIngers and Tea Baggers. Many, many Progressives are against the bill, and many left leaning independents who bailed on the Corporatist Democratic Party in the past for being puppets of the corporate power structure like their Republican counterparts are.

I oppose this bill not because of bullshit rhetoric like "socialist" or any other reactionary extreme term meant solely to provoke an emotional reaction.

See, I've read the bill. I've seen all the little loopholes in it that basically water down or even reverse its so called "reform" measures. In fact, I was angered to see that this bill actually does even more for the corporate health insurance providers than the existing system. There are so many corporate perks, you sit there wondering why they didn't do a better job of trying to hide them. The answer being of course, "no one's gonna read the damn thing!"

I severed my ties with the Democratic Party a decade ago--basically after the capitulation of 2000. I still have argued for their side in certain debates--mainly against the war in Iraq, and many other George W. Bush policy blunders. But once away from the Dems, it became easy to see they were just as controlled by the corporations as the Republicans are, except the GOP doesn't try and hide it. They make it plainly clear that their mouths are on the phalli of the corporations, and they swallow, too.

But the Democrats have always tried to hide it, tried to make it seem like they were the party of the people, when they are the party for the lawyers and investment bankers. In truth, both parties try and put up this front like they are so diametrically opposed to each other, that it's funny to watch them go through their acts.

But they have the same bosses. They legislate with the same end results and bottom lines. That's why this health care bill is a corporate blow job with a reach around. And anyone who says it's good for the people is spouting talking points without having read it, or they favor corporate rule, I guess.

But please understand, oh readers, that opposition to the bill is not just from conservatives, tea baggers, Republicans, and the like. Progressives, Libertarians, Green Party members, Independents, and here's the funniest part: Socialists are against this bill. I have two friends who claim membership to the Socialist Party, and both of them hate the bill, too. There is very little in it that can be considered socialist, and no more socialist than the post office or education system.

The merging of corporate and government administration is more accurately termed fascist, but the Tea Baggers latched on to "Socialist" because it's "scary." Thinking they could hearken back to McCarthyism days, they tried to pull another "red scare" that wasn't necessary: the bill on its own is scary enough. Any form of corporate control is scary because corporations are much more evil and corrupt than almost any government. There's a saying that if you left a corporation under a jar left to go about its business without intervention, when you came back after a time, you'd find 12 really fat people sitting around a table with mouths open like baby birds. See, they had eaten everything (consumed all the resources), were still hungry (still greedy for more profits), and now they're begging for more food (asking the govt for a bailout).

It is my opinion that the corporate way of administration is inherently corrupt. It bastardizes the concept of free market capitalism to the point where corruption and greed are its dominant characteristics, and will always work their way to the forefront and control every aspect of life. Those who work for the corporation have rights under the constitution, but that wasn't enough: they wanted extra rights. So not only did those individuals employed by the corporation have rights, they coerced the courts into giving them even more rights which superceded those of individuals, making the corporate entity infinitely more powerful and influential than the individual. And thus, the beginning of the end of the United States of America.

The end came last January with the SCOTUS Citizens United decision giving the corporations the right to buy political candidates, and influence the legislature with their huge sums of money. Starting this November, there will never be a candidate elected who is not affiliated with corporate interests. Not that there are many now, but they no longer have to pretend.

And then came HR 3590, the corporate health care reform (not!) bill that was written by health care industry lobbyists, serving the interests of the health insurance providers and pharmaceutical corps while the politicians assumed their age old roles of good cop/bad cop, with the Republicans pretending to be outraged by this turn to communism, worse than Communist Russia said one idiot congressman from Texas. This is for our benefit, 'we the people.' The show where the Democrats pretend the bill is for us, and the Republicans pretend to argue in our interest against it, when both sides know how much it benefits their corporate masters and their shareholders when the mandate kicks in. Such theater, and so many of us, the people, are convinced it's real life, that we get caught up in it. And we argue for it or against it, not knowing really what it says or who it favors, really. We watch our legislators, we mimic them "baby killer! baby killer!" and we settle down in our partisan divisions, blindly following someone else's lead.

I say "we" but I don't mean "we." For once, I actually educated myself on a supremely controversial issue, and once I learned how badly in favor of corporate interests this bill was geared to the expense of those who need health care reform (all of us), I had to side with those who believed the bill is a communist plot--not because that's what I believe, but because they were the only ones opposing it vociferously. I heard the voices of other progressives, independents, and those not affiliated with the "right" I listed earlier, join mine in opposition to the bill, but so few noticed that we somehow got lumped in as right wing nut jobs. Those of you who know me personally know that calling me a right wing nut job is probably the most hilarious thing ever. And even though I'm not a Democrat, only a few of my economic views-- a handful of them, to be true--even approach conservative, and they are more along the lines of Goldwater than Reagan or the neocons.

And let me say that even though we lost, and the world's worst health care reform bill was signed into law yesterday, it was a pleasure aligning temporarily with you right wingers for this cause. I think I learned that we as Americans have more in common with each other than the differences we have which we let destroy our unity as a nation. We can come together if we're all willing to listen to each other, and not put personalities and ego ahead of what's best for the country. Philosophically, I've always downplayed bi-partisanship as a gimmick to make legislators look appealing to the common man. But the enemy of my enemy...prevails just fine. If I can be an example of just one thing, it's that all of you people who consider yourselves Republicans or Democrats are being played, lied to, and manipulated for your support. Your parties are the property, employees of, and tools of the corporate ownership of this country, more aptly named the Corporate States of America. Because the only way in which we are united anymore, is that we have the same boss. We are owned by corporate America, the banks, the health industry (pharma, insurance, etc), the food processors, the mainstream media outlets, the telecom corporations who help the NSA spy on us, oil companies, retail chains, and fast food corps. And that's due directly to the Republicans and Democrats, guaranteeing corporate rule for as long as they exist.