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

To: Dan Spillane who wrote (2035)	5/19/1999 6:46:00 AM
From: Anthony Wong	Respond to of 2539

British Doctors Call for Labels on Gene-Altered Foods Paris, Wednesday, May 19, 1999 By Rick Weiss Washington Post Service WASHINGTON - The premier medical association in Britain has joined the European fracas over genetically engineered foods by saying that foods harboring new genes should be labeled as such so consumers can choose to avoid them until they are proven safe. In a strongly worded report that immediately increased trade tensions with the United States, the British Medical Association also called Monday for gene-altered crops to be processed separately from conventional crops, rather than together as is done in the United States, so that any health effects that may eventually turn up will be traceable to the products that caused them. If growers in the United States or other countries continue to refuse to segregate gene-modified products, the association concluded, then Britain should consider banning imports of those foods. The recommendations prompted a quick negative reaction in the U.S. Congress, whose leaders have become increasingly irritated with Europe's resistance to agricultural biotechnology, a lucrative field dominated by the United States. Last week, a bipartisan group of 36 senators sent a letter to President Bill Clinton urging him to stand up for American agricultural biotechnology at the World Trade Organization and in other international forums, including the coming summit meeting of the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations plus Russia, to avoid ''a looming trade conflict'' with Europe. Senator John Ashcroft, the Missouri Republican who wrote and circulated the letter along with Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, fumed when he learned of the British report. ''It is characteristic of the European Union to hide behind studies such as this in order to maintain its protectionist trade policies,'' said Mr. Ashcroft, whose state is the home of Monsanto Co., the global leader in agricultural biotechnology. He said studies such as the latest one demonstrated ''with absolute clarity'' why President Bill Clinton must ''address biotech trade at the head-of-state level'' at the G-7 meeting. The 119,000-member British Medical Association represents more than 80 percent of doctors in Britain. It has weighed in before on the issue of genetically engineered crops and foods, but the report released Monday - based on an analysis of current scientific knowledge - contains the strongest warnings yet as to what remains unknown about the foods' environmental and health effects. The crops contain genes from bacteria and other organisms to make them resistant to weed-killing chemicals and insects. They are being grown on millions of acres in the United States, where regulatory agencies have deemed them safe, but they remain heavily restricted in Europe, where public acceptance has been low. Concerns about genetically engineered corn have already halted virtually all U.S. corn exports to Europe, costing American farmers about $200 million a year. But hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. exports of genetically engineered soy are so far being accepted by Europe. The British report does not say such foods are dangerous. But it says that without proof of safety, the wise course is to proceed more slowly. For example, the report says, no one knows yet whether the antibiotic-resistance genes used to engineer crops might get passed to bacteria in people's internal organs, leading to the growth of drug-resistant pathogens. Just in case, the group calls upon companies to abandon use of those genes. That conservative approach contrasts sharply with that of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which allowed companies to use such genes after a review of the scientific literature concluded that it was unlikely that such problematic gene transfers would occur. U.S. agencies have made it their policy not to regulate engineered crops or foods differently from conventionally bred products. ''We do not have any information that the use of recombinant DNA techniques creates a class of products different in quality or safety,'' said Jim Maryanski, biotechnology coordinator for the Food and Drug Administration. Jay Byrne, a spokesman for Monsanto, said segregation of engineered products from conventional ones would create ''an arbitrary two-tier system that would only serve to increase food costs for consumers.'' iht.com Also see: British Report: Label Gene-Modified Food Call by U.K. Doctors Group Adds to Trade Tensions With U.S., Brings Strong Reaction on Hill washingtonpost.com

To: Dan Spillane who wrote (2035)	5/19/1999 6:55:00 AM
From: Anthony Wong	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2539

This piece from the Irish Times is good reading: An Irishman's Diary Friday, May 14, 1999 Opinion/Kevin Myers Perhaps you read the imperturbable common sense from Lt-Gen Gerry McMahon on our proposed membership of Partnership for Peace and the comparable wisdom from Prof Tom Raftery on genetically modified foods, both of which appeared in this newspaper this week. You may be sure: they're wasting their time. A huge new constituency of know-nothing voodoo greenery has emerged in recent years, which revels in cabals of wicked scientists out to poison us all, and in secret NATO conspiracies to lure us out of our internationally admired neutrality, and which most of all triumphs in simple ignorance. This voodoo greenery is as immune to logic, to science and to fact as any of the unintellectual witch-burning hysterias which regularly visit human societies. We can only hope it passes before it does too much harm. Inorganic methods Food first. The world we live is fed not by natural green methods but by the unnatural modifications of science. There is, however, an enduring example of what happens when we depend on solely "natural" methods of food production which we should all remember; it is called The Famine. Potato blight is not kept at bay by organic methods but by inorganic ones devised by chemists. It is by the endeavours of such chemists that the great centres of world famine, China and India, where until 30 years ago starvation would roam in regular cycles, predictably killing tens of millions of people, are now able to export food around the world. In his recent letter, Tom Raftery quoted from Norman Borlaug, one of the greatest human beings of this century. He was the architect of what is called the Green Revolution; but of course, it was not green at all. It was proto-GM crop engineering. He devised wholly unnatural genetic combinations to produce higher and more disease resistant grains and rices, and it was he who more than anyone else in the world has the moral and scientific authority to pronounce on the green voodooists who dominate debate on this topic. "Current agricultural technology and advances in the pipeline give the world the ability to feed 10 billion people. The problems is whether producers are going to be permitted to use this technology. Extreme environmental elitists seem to be doing everything they can to stop scientific progress in its tracks. While affluent nations can afford to pay more for food produced by the so-called 'organic' methods, one billion chronically undernourished people of the low-income, fooddeficit nations cannot." Bourgeois élite Of course, the billion chronically under-nourished people in what used to be the Third World do not matter a great deal to the middle-class green voodooists in the West. This bourgeois élite probably rather likes the thought that ten miles below the wings of the jetliner taking them to a green conference in Rio or wherever there is an ecologically friendly Eastern peasant toiling in his ecologically friendly paddy field helped by his ecologically friendly buffalo while his ecologically friendly wife weaves ecologically friendly garments in their ecologically friendly hut surrounded by their ecologically friendly children with their ecologically friendly rickets. The truth is that the greens are not so fond of people as they are of their own doctrines of pious anti-scientism. Like their ideological predecessors, the commissars who imposed collective farming, and collective famine, on the peoples of the Soviet Union and Communist China, the application of their politically-pure know-nothing green theories is far more important than the actual consequences of that application. These greens can be really quite dangerous, nasty characters. A virulent verdurousness has also been at work in discussions about our membership of PfP, and poor Gerry McMahon will try to explain the truths about this in vain; his words are unlikely even to be heard in the deafening and sanctimonious roar about our neutrality. They are nonetheless worth repeating: our absence from PfP is further restricting what was already a rather limited role in world peacekeeping. And limited that role certainly has been. The smallness of our Army, its limited equipment and the 21year UNIFIL commitment has meant our capacities as peacekeepers comes nowhere near matching the reputation our neutralists think we possess. No colossus We are not the Colossus of Neutrality Bestriding the Globe that the green neutralists like to think we are. For most people around the world, Ireland is as indistinguishable from Scotland as Latvia is from Estonia or Ecuador is from Venezuela. They do not, on hearing of this country, fall on their knees crying, "Ireland! Internationally revered neutral country! Ireland, home of internationally respected peacekeepers! Ireland, ex-colony, uniquely placed to understand the concerns of other non-imperial countries! Ireland, home of an independent and non-aligned space where opposing sides in a conflict can feel their case can be presented and heard!" No. In reality, if they even admit to hearing of this tiny little country - merely half the size of the ancient Finnish province of Karelia - most foreigners are likely to say: "Ireland, ah yes, home of the IRA, bang bang, Bobby Sands and knee-capping." Or maybe: "Ireland, capital Edinborrow, and just a few hours' train-ride from London, and I sure do love those kilts and your Highland Flings." Or: "Ireland? Ireland? You mean Holland, yes?" But: "Ireland, legendary home of morally superior neutrality and of an army which is internationally admired for its peacekeeping"? Hardly. And as for membership of alliances: Ruairi Quinn is right. NATO's days are over. We must look to a United European Treaty Organisation; and in the meantime, we might learn a little modesty. But most of all, we must learn not to pay any attention to those who make a political virtue of their ignorance.