In conversation with humanitarian, Terry Waite

JOIN THE DEBATE

• Posted by John M.Bigyemano - 23rd November
  

  LETS SAY NO TO GM FOODS
  The world’s agro biotechnology giants led by MONSANTO are relentlessly seeking to tighten their grip on the world’s food supply through the proliferation of their so-called magic crops. Their scientists tell us that agro biotech seeks to transfer only the genetic material needed say to make a rice or maize variety resistant to say the maize stalk borer and that what they are doing is not different from what happens in nature. What they do not say is that all those genes have other “irrelevant” genetic material whose behaviour and future reaction is still unknown. It is even possible that, like the tobacco industry in the USA got to know about the dangers posed by tobacco direct/passive smoking to peoples health through the addictiveness of nicotine in the 50s but chose to keep it under wraps for commercial reasons, maybe the agro biotech giants already know how the irrelevant genetic material (transferred during genetic modification) behaves but are keeping quiet.
  They have advanced three main reasons to convince the world including illiterate ignorant consumers why agro biotech is the way to go:

  1. With the world’s population set to double before 2050, they argue only GM tech can help feed the world.They cite China, India and Brazil. This argument is hollow. GM tech has only been able to deliver the promised bumper harvests only under the tightly controlled conditions of research.Chinese agro biotech is not controlled by Monsanto.

  2. They argue that the world accepts gm research into vital medicines such as insulin for the treatment/control of diabetes. This too is hollow. Insulin is administered only to willing (and knowing) patients of diabetes. GM food on the other hand is consumed mostly unknowingly (as in when USAID distributes gm corn soya blend and gm vegetable (cooking) oil to AIDS patients in third world countries Uganda included). We must draw a clear line between what is acceptable as a risk in human food and drugs.Thats why cancer patients accept chemotherapy injections.
  3. they also argue that bumper harvests as those promised by agro biotech giants using patented technology, would help farmers in the third world and else where since they would sell the surplus after their food needs. This is also hollow.Without government and state subsidies, farmers in the West would not stay in business. Secondly, poor people have difficulty selling even the little they harvest from traditional farming. If they were to embrace agro biotech and reap the bumper harvests promised, this would singularly flood the markets and depress the prices of those crops, taking the farmers out of the frying pan of poverty into and beyond the fire of debt, leaving them indebted to the owners of the technology who are only too willing to sell them fertilizer and other inputs on credit.

  Opponents of food gm technology are not anti gm tech per se. They do accept that gm has and will continue to have its medicinal, environmental and other uses. China is increasingly looking to gm tech to feed its large population. This is not an agro biotech company initiative, rather its a government led initiative with specific out-puts.

  Another major factor that has worked against the proponents of corporate agro-biotech is the Mafia way in which these companies have continued to connive with governments ( whose politicians own shares in these techonology firms, whose researchers have benefited from grants from the agro biotech giants in order to do their Masters and Doctoral degrees) in the west to force feed poor people on gm food. Research Centres for the agro biotech giants are like fortresses, with higher security than state military installations. I was in Zambia in 2002 when that country rejected gm food from the WFP. James Morris went on prime time tv to insist they had to eat it or starve. They rejected it - and registered a bumper harvest soon after, which enabled them to export maize to Zimbabwe.

  The third world requires demand driven , bottom up agro biotechnology which feeds into their specific needs rather than the top down which enables the Monsantos of this world to obtain a strangle hold on the world’s food supply.

  John M.Bigyemano
  P.O.Box 11286
  Kampala

  PS: The accusation levelled by the the agro biotech industry on food safety activists that they are employed by Greenpeace is rather silly - and holloow. You do not need Green Peace to know that the biotech giants are taking the world for a ride.