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Biotech / Medical : Monsanto Co. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sim1 who wrote (2308)	7/20/1999 11:26:00 AM
From: SteveR	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2539

"Opinion: Europe Engaged in a Phony War on Biotechnology," Knight Ridder (news service), July 15, 1999, by Dennis T. Avery ====================================================================== Europe's governments, after frightening their own consumers about the safest food supply in world history, are now making a huge effort to share their food panic with the rest of the world. They are doing this for shabby political reasons. They want to protect their failed farm subsidies, and they hope to enhance the image of their statist, socialist regimes as more "caring" than America's supposedly heartless techno-capitalism. Europe is trying to ditch the science-based food safety regime that currently governs the World Trade Organization (WTO) in favor of "public perceptions of food safety." This means putting the food supply at the mercy of such hysteria campaigns as the one against biotechnology in food or the furor over traces of nontoxic dioxin in Belgian chicken feed. If Europe's deception succeeds, genetic engineering will not be used to help the world's farmers meet a threefold increase in demand for food by 2050. The WTO itself, which has produced more economic growth than any institution in history, would be at risk. Western Europe has been burdened with millions of tons of food it couldn't sell at politically inflated prices. To lower their farm subsidy costs, its governments encouraged the myth of pesticide dangers and actively subsidized low-yield organic production. Europe is paying virtually no attention to the biggest food-borne danger, which is bacterial contamination -- and which is especially frequent in organic food. Society needs to keep costs and benefits in perspective. The big truth is that there is no inherent danger from biotechnology, in either food or medicine. We should take the modest risks of researching these powerful technologies because they have the potential to save millions of human lives as well as millions of square miles of wildlife habitat.