Vatican helps save GM foods
20.07.2009
Fr Charles Rue has some serious reservations about the Study Week being held in the Vatican this month.
The Pontifical Academy of Science has arranged a Study Week to be held at the Vatican from May 15-19 titled 'Transgenic Plants for Food Security in the Context of Development.' It appears to be a public relations exercise by the biotech companies.
A tactic to get Vatican endorsement for GMO's (Genetically Modified Organisms) was tried on September 24, 2004 when the US Embassy to the Holy See and the Pontifical Academy of Science co-hosted an event. It failed then but has re-emerged.
The biotech companies see the Vatican as a target to be 'white-anted', this time using the Study Week in the GM-industry's campaign to destroy processes of regulations for the breeding, testing and labelling of transgenic foods.
In an Introduction to the booklet outlining the topics and speakers for the Study Week, Professor Ingo Potrykus, Chairman of the Swiss based Humanitarian Golden Rice Board and Network, states, "Changing societal attitudes, including the regulatory processes involved, is extremely important if we are to save biotechnology." This statement is both blatant and alarming.
Professor Potrykus returns several times to the topic of dismantling the regulatory system for transgenic food production and consumption. He blames it for impeding the spread of potential benefits to be gained from adopting biotechnology in agriculture. He judges regulation processes to be bureaucratic and unwarranted by science and introduces a new phrase in the attack on regulations - driven by 'extreme precaution.'
Interestingly, Professor Potrykus admits that this particular Study Week is not a standard 'science' meeting while claiming that opposition to biotechnology in agriculture is usually ideological. However, it is obvious from his introduction that the Study Week is ideologically biased towards advancing the dominance of agriculture by Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). The Study Week will not be an unbiased assessment of health and bio-diversity aspects of GMOs, or sustainability of agricultural systems.
In this introduction, the professor equates biotech with GM agricultural production. The more precise technical terms for GM are revealing, 'gene replacement' and 'transgenics.' These terms help expose the fudge continually pushed by the biotech industry that GM is nothing new and has been going on for thousands of years in selective breeding.
However, in contrast with GM techniques, selective breeding has always been within a particular species and been well tested over time for possible ill effects. Genes are not like bricks in a wall to be shifted around at will. Genes are living and relating and capable of complex developments, not always positive.
The pro-GM line up of speakers at the Study Week is revealing. It appears that every speaker is a proponent of GM crops, sometimes militantly so as is the case of Dr. Peter Raven and Dr. C.S. Prakesh.
In a supposedly Catholic context, the absence of long time commentators on the dangers inherent in GM foods is of note, such as Jesuit Frs Roland Lesseps and Peter Henriot, and Columban Fr Sean McDonagh. Also absent are representatives from the peak Catholic Caritas International, and Catholic development agencies, such as CAFOD in Britain.
As always in this type of public relation exercise, the plight of the poor and hungry is trotted out as the major concern of the Study Week and Biotech industry. This is deception.
The charter of every biotech company demands that its first task is to make a profit for shareholders. Biotech company executives are not friends of the poor. They are closely aligned with the world's financial leaders.
However, Cardinal Renato Martino, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, has changed his previous stance on the possible benefits of GMOs. He said that responsibility for the world food crisis is in the hands of unscrupulous people who focus only on profit and certainly not on the well-being of all people (L'Osservatore Romano, January 1, 2009).
Other deceptions propounded in Professor Potrykus' introduction include: no substantiated environmental or health risks have been noted after more than a decade of commercial use of GMOs; this is because the scientific testing of widespread anecdotal evidence has been deliberately avoided.
Many farmers and environmentalists in Australia have campaigned for years on economic and labelling issues to do with the commercialisation of GM crops.
Wanting the truth, they have supported comparative studies proposed by the Western Australian Government but rejected by the biotech companies. They have asked for a public assessment of the supposed scientific evidence presented by the biotech companies to government regulatory authorities. Now pro-GM voices are ducking for cover in the light of the outcomes from National Variety Trials showing that GM canola yields less than non-GM counterparts (Stock and Land January 22, 2009).
Real solutions to sustainable development and feeding the world in a time of declining oil production and rapid climate change do exist. For example, in 2008 the United Nation agencies UNCTAD and UNEP published 'Organic Agriculture and Food Security in Africa'
The Pontifical Academy would be better employed disseminating knowledge about these real alternatives in the context of Catholic Social Teaching rather than giving a platform to promote GMOs as a saviour of the poor - false prophets and all that.
Contact:
Rev. Charles Rue
Columban JPIC Coordinator Australia
Locked Bag 2002
STRATHFIELD NSW 2135
(02) 9352 8000
charlesrue@columban.org.au
http://columban.org.au/build/our-works/jpic/genetically-modified-food/
