November 26, 2008
Jimmy’s GM Food Fight
I’m really starting to despair at the quality of BBC programming these days, and today’s Horizon is no exception. An appallingly one sided view of GM crops that paints all scientists as being of the same opinion (GM is wonderful and harmless and will save the world’s poor) and the only voice of dissent comes from violent eco-protesters.
Near the start of the programme they show a time lapse clip of a field 50% GM and 50% non GM. Then herbicides are applied and the non GM crops wither and die while the GM crops are unaffected by the massive dose of herbicide.
Jimmy Doherty then claims a few seconds later that ‘GM crops are good for the environment because farmers use less pesticide and herbicide’.
Hang on a minute…
If the plant has been deliberately genetically modified to be highly resistant to a herbicide it is so that more herbicide, not less, can be applied to it. This is a highly contentious issue that keeps getting debunked. In 2002 the BBC’s own Newsnight looked at GM farming in America and found that not only were more herbicides and pesticides being used on GM crops, but the weeds were starting to cross pollinate and, more worryingly, develop herbicide resistance as the genes in the GM crops ‘jumped’ into the weeds.
The programme also fails to mention the fact that Monsanto, the company that makes the GM crops mentioned, also sells the herbicides and maintains that GM is perfectly safe, have a less then favourable past. They have repeatedly lied about the safety of their products and used all manner of tactics to suppress evidence.
Given that good science maintains a control group to compare effects with, there is no way for us to detect long term effects of GM because of the rapid worldwide adoption and the invasive nature of plants, GM crops have already contaminated and crossed with natural strains over a distance of hundreds of miles. There is no proper control group where we can easily identify trends in health or patterns of illness as even people that eat only organic produce are still consuming significant amounts of GM food.
The bleeding heart tour of Africa is also a shocking thing to do. Rhodesia managed just fine growing non GM crops until Mugabe took over and gave all the farms to his cronies. All of Africa’s food problems could be solved with good governance and an agreement with the US & Europe to stop destroying it’s local markets by dumping massively subsidised grain on the continent.
A little out of date now, but an excellent book on the subject is GE and You by Moyra Bremner. Much, much better than the piece of garbage the BBC has just aired that is as balanced as a Monsanto press statement.
Tags: Genetic, Engineering, Genetically, Modified, Food, Soya, Crops, GM, Monsanto
Filed by dave at 6:00 am under Uncategorized