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World Bank to review GM crops

Adrian Bebb | 31.08.2002 10:11 | Bio-technology | Globalisation

International review of farming announced at Earth Summit.

Press Release
Immediate release: Thursday 29th August

HALT GM CROPS!
International review of farming announced

Friends of the Earth called for a moratorium on the growing of genetically modified (GM) crops following today's announcement at the Earth Summit of a World Bank-funded initiative to review the use of GM foods and farming.

The Process, announced by the World Bank at a press conference in Johannesburg, is chaired by Robert Watson, former chair of the Inter-government Panel on Climate Change and Chief Scientific Advisor to the World Bank, and aims to include views from all sides on the impacts of agricultural science. It is scheduled to meet in Dublin in November.

The Process will be responsible for looking at the impacts of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) as well as other agricultural science over the next three years.

Friends of the Earth cautiously welcomed the review, but sounded a note of caution over the independence of the review, given the involvement of the World Bank. The issue of GM food and farming is different to climate change, and it is questionable whether a top-down review of this controversial science is appropriate. The group warned
that the review could play into the hands of the US and biotech industry rather than ordinary people, who should be making the decisions about how they farm and what food they eat. The first meeting will be crucial in ensuring that any process includes all stakeholders and covers all relevant issues.

Adrian Bebb, speaking for Friends of the Earth, said:

"By the time this review is finished the choice of many farmers and consumers around the world will already be removed as GM crops continue to contaminate our environment, conventional crops and food.
A moratorium should be immediately implemented."

ENDS

Contact:
Adrian Bebb 0113 389 9952 (m) 07712 843211

Adrian Bebb

Comments

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Summit is a GM PR Stunt

31.08.2002 13:21

The climate is being created to make it impossible for Africans to refuse GM crops and GM food aid, because the bio-tech industry can find no other takers for this potential money maker. The Earth Summit is suppossed to be about sustaining development, not arresting it by sowing the seeds of a future environmental disaster in Africa.

Cynic Al


Im a bit surprised at the way the GM debate

01.09.2002 12:46

has treated the matter as if it was a novelty, potential problem, when the possibilities of GM experiments escaping have been known since the 1950s.
remember the 'Killer Bees', 'The Bees from Brasil', now so commonplace as to be a bit of a joke (and a major honey producer for the host country? ) This was actually a rudimentary GM experiment, crossing in laboratory conditions, two strains of bee which would never breed in the wild, which produced a handful of industrious, but rather nasty queens, which promptly flew through an open window...
that was in 1957, incidentally the same year in which the atomic pile in Windscale (now Sellafield or Buttercup Meadow) caught fire, proving the perils of reactors long before 3 Mile island or Chernobyl.

G H Gythuk