British Government Puppets To GM Biotech Sector?

Below are extracts from a detailed article by Colin Todhunter, the whole of which can be read here on Countercurrents.

It is recommended for all who are interested in the promotion of democracy, truth, understanding the world capitalist order and the position of politicians, scientists and other individuals who seek pecuniary interest against the wishes and well being of the vast majority. Another reminder of why we are working constantly to convince the working class to join us in the struggle to ditch capitalism.

JS 

The British government appears hell bent on ramming the GM biotech sector's poison done the throats of the British people. Food and Farming Secretary Owen Paterson has been called a puppet of the sector and is either ignorant of or is wholly misrepresenting the efficacy and health impacts of GMOs (1), while Anne Glover, Chief Scientific Advisor of the European Commission, has been accused of presenting lies as facts over the GM issue (2).

Now the British government's Chief Scientist, Mark Walport, has insisted that EU rules banning the commercial cultivation of GM crops have to be changed to feed the world.

GMOs and glyphosate, which is used in conjunction with many GM crops and in increasing quantities as more GM crops are planted (3,4), are associated with birth defects and infertility (5), autism, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's (6), celiac disease and gluten intolerance (7), Morgollons disease (8) and a wide range of other diseases (9,10).

In terms of solving hunger, his argument is flawed too: more traditional methods of producing food produce lead to greater results and are genuinely sustainable, unlike chemical-industrial agriculture and GMOs which are clearly not (11,12,13,14,15).

If Paterson et al really want to address hunger, they need look no further than the type of corporate-driven economic plunder being pursued under the guise of neo-liberalism (16) and the associated nature of the global system of food production and distribution (17), which by creating indebtedness and destroying food sovereignty is skewed to benefit rich nations and creates and sustains hunger and food poverty and unnecessary ‘population pressures' in parts of the world. 

Paterson et al may like to take a hard look at the imperialist policies being pursued by rich nations under the banner of ‘globalisation' or ‘spreading democracy' via militarism or ‘free' trade if they or the corporations they are backing are keen to talk about feeding the world and a world of plenty for all. Those policies, whether applied to Ukraine (18), India (19) or imposed on ordinary people in the EU (20) or elsewhere are aimed at concentrating wealth and power in the hands of a corporate global oligarchy. The type of solution they propose for food poverty is the type of solution that springs from an engrained imperialist mindset, however unwitting that mindset may be. We already live in a world of plenty – appropriated from those who are denied it.

As if to underline that fact, many people in Britain are going hungry, one of the richest nations on the planet, not because of a lack of food, but because they are being impoverished as a result of the very policies outlined above (21). It's a microcosm of what's happening throughout the world.   

Such people (Walport, Paterson, etc) could spend their time more usefully by lobbying against such policies as opposed to lobbying for the corporations and the US state that fuel this system and which seek to profit from using tampered with food as a weapon to control food producers, food consumers and nation states. 

New pro-GM ‘independent' report 

Walport and Jones's statements came on the back of a report from a government advisory body released last week. It was presented as an ‘independent' report in a bid to speed up the use of GM food in the  UK, regardless of the fact that British people do not want it (22). However, according to the Mail Online (23), all five authors of the report have a vested interest in promoting GM crops. Little surprise then that they call for GM crops to be fast-tracked into  Britain . 

 Does Britain or for that matter the world want to hand over its entire food sovereignty to US agribusiness, which wants to control the entire system of food production and distribution (24)? Recent events in India indicate how GM sector puppets in high political office are narrowing our choice (25). People are already dying as a result of the chemicals being inserted into and sprayed onto their food. GMOs offer more of the same and also provide the opportunity for the US to hold virtually every country on the planet to ransom once its corporations own all food, from lab to seed to table.