Tristram Stuart - Norman Borlaug - Lutz Kliche - Penn & Teller TV - Independent on Sunday - Daily Mail - Paul Angell - Monsanto - Richard Lewontin - Suzanne Wuethele - Norman Ellstrand - Harash Narang - Erik Millstone - Ian Gibson - Statement 21 Scientists - Arpad Pusztai - Ian R Crane - Susan Bardocz - Food and Drug Administration Statement - Gerald Guest - Linda Kahl - Horizon TV - Lord Peter Melchett - Geoffrey Clements - John Scott - Colin Blakemore - Richard Lacey - Philip Regal - Andrew Kimbrell - George Gaskell - John Fagan - Jonathan Porritt - Joseph Cummins - David Brownstein - Adam Leith Gollne - Neil deGrasse Tyson - GM Food Cultivating Fear TV - The Future of Food 2004 - Alex Jones - The Corbett Report - Genetic Roulette: The Gamble of Our Lives 2012 -
Of course, I prefer organic farming to chemical-dependent farming, but sometimes absolutist organic prescriptions go too far. I don’t even rule out the possibility of genetic modification generating some benign ideas, as long as we can keep them away from monopolists such as Monsanto. Tristram Stuart
You can’t build a peaceful world on empty stomachs and human misery. Norman Borlaug
I want to see Science serve a useful purpose to improve the standard of living for all people. Norman Borlaug, agricultural scientist
The European Commission, the European Food Safety Authority and other European institutions, remain strongly in favour of genetically modified foods, despite the fact that a large majority of the European population has already rejected them. Giving citizens the right to vote in referendums whenever significant changes are made to laws affecting them would therefore help to ensure the creation of a Europe for the people, by the people, and put in place an important check on the balance of power. When political policy decisions are persistently made against the will of the people, as is now the case in Brussels, what you have is not democracy but a dictatorship. Lutz Kliche, President of Alliance for Health, Peace and Social Justice
These Greenpeace dudes want us to believe that GE crops will ruin other crops and harm any animal or person that eats those foods. These extremists love to use bullshit propaganda ... It’s pretty easy to protest when you’re not hungry. Penn & Teller, Bullshit! s1e11: Eat This, Showtime 2003
Norman Borlaug ... The greatest person that ever lived? At a time when doomsayers were hopping around saying that people were going to starve, Norman was working ... When he won the Noble Prize in 1970 they said he had saved a billion people ... Norman is the greatest human being. ibid.
All food is the product of technology ... Every food has been changed through selective breeding or grafting ... Why is anyone fighting food advance? ibid.
GM: Revealed! Government’s secret multimillion pound support for genetically modified crops. The Independent on Sunday headline
The (US) Food and Drug Administration is expected to give approval for the sale of cloned animal food – without labelling – in the next few weeks. Daily Mail article 22nd November 2007, EU May Be Asked To Ban Clone Farms
Cloned Meat Betrayal: Unlabelled diary and beef products to go on sale here after OUR minister sabotages Europe’s call for a ban. Daily Mail headline 30th March 2011
Monsanto should not have to vouch for the safety of biotech food, our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Paul Angell, Director of Monsanto Corporate Communications
Agricultural bio-technology will find a supporter within the White House next year, regardless of which candidate wins the election in November. Monsanto in-house newsletter 6th October 2000
An ecosystem you can always intervene and change something in it but there’s no way of knowing what all the downstream effects will be or how it might affect the environment. We have such a miserably poor understanding of how the organism develops from its DNA that I would be surprised if we don’t get one rude shock after another. Professor Richard Lewontin, Professor of Genetics, Harvard University
This technology is being promoted in the face of concerns by respectable scientists and in the face of data to the contrary by the very agencies which are supposed to be protecting human health and the environment. The bottom line in my view is that we are confronted with the most powerful technology the world has ever known, and it is being deployed with almost no thought whatsoever to its consequences. Dr Suzanne Wuethele, US Environmental Protection Agency toxicologist
Within ten years we will have a moderate to large scale ecological or economic catastrophe because there will be so many products being released. Professor Norman Ellstrand, University of California ecological geneticist
If you look at the simple principle of genetic modification it spells ecological disaster. There are no ways of quantifying the risks ... The solution is simply to ban the use of genetic modification in food. Dr Harash Narang, University of Leeds research associate
The fundamental problem of the way in which GM foods have been approved is that they haven’t really been tested properly at all. All that has happened is something which I would characterise as an exercise in wishful thinking. Dr Erik Millstone, Sussex University
There is an awful lot unknown about hazards of new [GM food] crops and until it is fully tested we should not be subjecting people to risks, least of all young children. Dr Ian Gibson MP, former Dean of Biology at University of East Anglia
With genetic engineering familiar foods could become metabolically dangerous or even toxic. Statement by 21 scientists, including Professors Goodwin & McGlade & Saunders & Lacey
If it is left to me, I would certainly not eat it. We are putting new things into food which have not been eaten before. The effects on the immune system are not easily predictable and I challenge anyone who will say that the effects are predictable. Professor Arpad Pusztai
Today the EU pays an annual fine of $150 million to maintain its ban on the US hormone-fed beef. Clear evidence that WTO rules put free-trade interests of agribusiness above national health concerns.
Meanwhile, a flood of new GMO products are surreptitiously being introduced into EU agriculture. Monsanto, Syngenta and other GMO multinationals have already taken advantage of lax national rules in new EU member countries such as Poland to get the GMO ‘foot-in-the door’. Pro-GMO governments, such as that of Angela Merkel in Germany, abdicate any responsibility by claiming they are only following WTO ‘orders’. Which is exactly the line taken by the FSA!
Powerful agribusiness multinationals such as Monsanto, Dow Chemicals and DuPont are working through the WTO-backed Codex Alimentarius Commission in their determination to overrun national or regional efforts to halt the march of GMO. Ian R Crane, The UN/EU Plan to Destroy Organic Farming and to Eradicate the Complementary and Natural Health Care Agenda; viz website
Genetic modification instead of being a precise technology is a haphazard business. Professor Susan Bardocz, Alternative View II conference
From Farming to Pharming: 1996 Introduction of genetically engineered organisms (GE/GMO) into food; herbicide tolerate plants ... the pesticide factories; stacked events – transgene mixtures. ibid.
The plants produce about 1,000 – 3,000 x more pesticide than if it would be sprayed. And it gets into our soil, to our food and of course to our bodies. ibid.
Substantial Equivalence: If the major components of a GM plant (such as protein, fat, ash etc. contents) are within an acceptable range of the non-modified plant they are ‘substantially equivalent’. Traditional crop plants have a history of safe use. If the GM plants are ‘substantially equivalent’ to these, they are also safe to eat. ibid.
Secret FDA documents confirmed that the facts contradicted the Statement. ibid.
We need to remind ourselves, our peers, politicians and scientists that any democratic society which suppresses academic freedom and the inventiveness of the individual stifles its development and imperils its democratic institutions. ibid.
After it appeared that the commercialisation of GM food might suffer as a result of the broadcast, the Rowett [Research Institute] disowned our results, attacked and silenced us for ‘misleading the public’ with inaccurate information that was in fact previously released by them and compelled Arpad to ‘retire’. Media publicity after the interview brought home to people that they were the guinea pigs in a gigantic GM testing experiment. ibid. re sacking of Dr Putsztai
Keeping the public in the dark is the main central strategy used by industry particularly the geo-biotechnology industry. ibid.
Farmers in the Philippines working on Bt maize (MON 810) fields have developed allergy symptoms which disappeared on moving to other areas but reappeared on return to the same fields. ibid.
cf.
The Agency is not aware of any information showing that foods derived by these new methods differ from other foods in any meaningful or uniform way. Food & Drug Administration statement of policy 29th May 1992
cf.
Residues of plant constituents or toxicants in meat and milk products may pose human food safety concerns. Gerald Guest, director FDA’s Centre for Veterinary Medicine (CVM)
Animal feeds derived from genetically modified plants present unique animal and food safety concerns. Gerald Guest