Monsanto can count on its friends
This is a guest post from Myrto, sustainable agriculture campaigner.
When a giant agri-chemical company with a long track record of environmental crimes and health scandals, such as Monsanto sends a press release praising how wonderful are their products and how the central body of the EU that performs risk assessments (the European Food Safety Authority -EFSA) cleared out their one and only genetically modified maize cultivated in the EU you really need to look behind the smokescreen.
Monsanto even sent the news before the EFSA which makes me wonder about the independence of this organisation. They were eager to inform the world that their insect-resistant GE maize whose license had already expired is suitable for getting a new approval. Monsanto stated that ‘these announcements from the European Union demonstrate a strong commitment to science-based decision-making to allow farmers to choose biotech crops for their farms’.
But that is exactly the problem with GMOs in general and also with the specific maize one.
On science the jury is still out. There is no consensus in the scientific community about the safety of these products neither for our health nor for the environment. The EFSA has been repeatedly criticized not only by the civil society but also from governments and independent scientists for always favoring the companies' applications by giving positive opinions. It does not assess the long-term impacts of GMOs, does not take into account other diverging opinions, stress conditions, different regional environments and does not identify areas of uncertainty, a very important factor if a decision-maker wants to apply the principle of precaution and ban a GMO.
Like my friend and colleague Marco Contiero, Greenpeace EU GMO policy director, said: "allowing EFSA to express opinions on GM crops while it cannot assess long term environmental impacts is like allowing someone into a Formula 1 race just because they have a driving license."
On the ground, with the introduction of GMOs, farmers will loose their right to choose what they grow. GMOs are living organisms. Once they are released, via the pollen, the wind the bees, they can contaminate conventional and organic fields. There are studies showing that bees can travel up to 30 km or more.
If nature barriers do not exist and if you add on this the human factor, then contamination can occur in all stages of the food production, harvest, storage, transport, processing. There are already cases of contamination, such as the bayer rice in 2006, that proves that farmers and food traders/ processors loose money because of unwanted contamination. This lead us to the other end of the GMOs impacts: consumers also loose the right to choose the food they want. These impacts are also very important if we want to make a decision about gmos. Especially, when in the EU the majority of the public is against gmos. (you will find references in previous papers – eurobarometer etc).
So although EFSA is giving the green light to the re-approval of the ge maize the decision is still to be made by the European Commission first and then the European governments. It is worth noting that more and more EU countries have banned the Monsanto GE maize. Germany is the sixth country this year after, Austria, Hungary, Greece, France and Luxemburg. In an unprecedented move in May, 18 ministers from 12 EU countries sent EFSA a letter explaining scientific concerns linked to the unintended effects of MON810 on insects. The opinion published by EFSA shows no evidence that these concerns were seriously taken into account. In addition, last week, 11 EU countries also called on environment ministers to recognise the right to ban the cultivation of GMOs on their territory because of environmental concerns.
If the European Commission shows the usual blind reliance on EFSA’s flawed opinions is likely to anger member states who feel scientific concerns on GM maize are not being addressed seriously. Instead what the European Commission should do is to take into account the existing scientific evidence on the negative environmental and socio-economic impacts of Monsanto's MON810 maize and do not allow any other GM crop to be authorised in the EU till the risk assessment process is thoroughly improved, involve independent scientists and be fully transparent.
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Comments
When GMO food and its labeling is outlawed.....only Outlaws will have control over gmo food.
Posted by: arther rubinstank | July 24, 2009 9:09 AM