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Shan Oakes, Beverley, writes,
Dear
Editor,
If
you are considering the issue of genetic modification (GM)
after seeing the Horizon programme on BBC 2 last week, you
may be interested to hear about the experience of Canadian
farmer, Percy Schmeiser.
He
spoke at meetings in Lincoln, Driffield and at Bishop
Burton College last month, as part of a UK tour, about the
oppression of Canadian farmers by the seed giant,
Monsanto. As well as oppression, farmers are also
suffering very high levels of cancer, allergies and other
environmentally related diseases which they attribute to
GM crops and the chemicals which accompany them.
Power
and health issues were completely glossed over in the
Horizon programme.
The
pro-GM lobby promulgates fear of famine to help
corporations to market their products, whilst other
farming methods which work in collaboration with nature
(using traditional methods, minimal synthetic chemicals
etc) are denigrated as inefficient, which is far from the
truth. We can see the same pattern in many issues:
powerful profit-driven forces feeding public fear and
prejudice in order to get public opinion on their side.
How
can we, the general public, decide what is right when
there is so much distortion of the truth by faceless and
powerful interests? Our perspective on most things depends
on whether we are on the side of people and planet or on
the side of big business domination.
It's
time to choose where we stand.
The
GM issue will not go away because the United States
supports lack of regulation, and has therefore allowed GM
crops and GM in food, unlabelled. It wants the rest of the
world to buy its products, so the UK in particular is
coming under enormous pressure to cave in. What we are not
told, apart from by a few lone voices, is the overweening
power of the corporations and the misery this causes, not
only in Canada and the US, but also in India which has
seen a huge increase in farmers committing suicide for
reasons directly attributable to corporate pressure and
the introduction of GM.
Once
you go down the GM route there is no turning back. Once
genetically modified, plants can still reproduce, passing
on their man-made genes to other plants. The consequences
of this are not known, and once any unwanted effects are
known, it will be too late to retrieve the genes: a modern
day Pandora's Box.
H
G Wells said, 'Human history is more and more a race
between education and catastrophe': it is vital that we,
the public, make ourselves aware of the issues.
Sincerely,
Shan
Oakes
Green Party |
