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EU Foiled in Bid to Force France, Greece to Allow GM Crop
BRUSSELS - The European Commission was foiled Monday in its bid to force France and Greece to allow genetically modified maize from US biotech giant Monsanto to be grown in their fields.
Food chain experts from the EU member states, meeting in Brussels, could not reach agreement on whether to back or oppose the French and Greek refusal to allow the maize, which has been given the green light to be grown in Europe.
Activists fly a kite to protest against the cultivation of genetically modified maize. France will keep a ban on genetically modified maize from US biotech giant Monsanto until the environmental risks are clarified, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said Thursday. (AFP) The standing committee on food chain and animal health "failed to reach a qualified majority in favour or against," the commission said in a statement.
Nine of the 27 EU nations supported the commission call for the ban to be lifted while 16 opposed it or abstained. Germany and Malta did not take part, a source at the meeting said.
Monsanto's MON810 strain is the only genetically modified crop approved in the European Union but last year France suspended its cultivation, invoking a "safeguard clause".
Greece used the same legal provision in 2006 and has extended it since then.
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has said the maize is safe and there is no scientific evidence to justify the bans.
Without a solid mandate the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, will refer the matter to EU ministers to decide whether France and Greece should fall into line and allow the GM crop to be sown.
Monica Frassoni, co-leader of the Green group in the European parliament, urged vigilance against the commission's attempt to make member states allow GM crops to be grown.
"We must remain vigilant because it is not the first time that the commission has tried to force the hand of those member states that are most resistant to the growing of genetically modified maize," she said.
"The challenge now is to secure a majority big enough to reject the commission's proposal."
Last week, France's food watchdog also concluded that the genetically modified Monsanto maize was safe, contradicting an earlier report that led to a ban on the maize.
The earlier expert report had said evidence had emerged that MON810 had an effect on insects, a species of earthworm and micro-organisms.
There was also concern that wind-borne pollen from MON810 could travel much further than previously thought, perhaps as much as hundreds of kilometres.
But the report was controversial: 12 of the 15 scientists who compiled it issued a statement complaining that their findings had been misrepresented.
EU environment ministers will on March 2 vote on whether to ask Austria and Hungary to lift a similar GM ban.
Divided over the GMO issue, the European Union in December adopted a series of measures aimed at overcoming their differences and reaching unified decisions.
The member states notably recommended that the EFSA should be Europe's final arbiter on the safety of GM crops, but with input from national bodies.
They also agreed that decisions should take into account the medium- and long-term environmental impact of any decision, not just the health aspects.
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23 Comments so far
Show Allcamus13
At least they get a chance to try and stop it unlike the good old USA
Just like the peanut butter problem.
So b/c one factory has a health problem you want to ban all peanut butter in the US?
It's two factories, one in Georgia and one in Texas.
q
I'm making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch tomorrow. Mmm, Skippy Reduced Fat...sooooo good.
Overcoming Monsanto's power is a heroic endeavor.
Notice they are trying to consolidate power at the top through the EFSA. This is very bad. We all need to start rethinking states rights and the 10th Amendment (it's not just power to the states but power to the people--read it!)
Who will police the winds which can carry that GM pollen thousands of miles?
God damn Monsanto.
It is a lot more then a peanut butter problem. I highly recommend a video entitled "The Future Of Food". www.thefutureoffood.com. Also aired on Freespeech TV. When you have a better understanding of how genetically modified food is created in the laboratory then you might understand the really big problem with GMO food. Roundup ready seed, terminator seed. Scary stuff that needs to be banned, period.
John B
I see a huge legal problem with the cross pollenizing issue. In Canada Monsanto has already successfully sued a farmer for illegally growing "their" canola.
On a large scale this could have dangerous consequences. After bees, the wind etc. have spread to gene to other varieties, Monsanto will step in, say that's "our gene" and start to sue. Governments will intercede for their farmers and settle. Monsanto will make the Wall St jews look like chump change.
Monsanto has sponsored "hippie-type" groups to divert our attention to health and wellness concerns that can easily be argued down while "their genes" are getting into the natural chain.
So far, their plan is working.
"Monsanto has sponsored "hippie-type" groups to divert our attention to health and wellness concerns that can easily be argued down."
Interesting, do you have a link where I could get more information about this?
* The biotech industry claims that the FDA has thoroughly evaluated GM foods and found them safe. This is untrue. Internal FDA documents made public from a lawsuit, reveal that agency scientists warned that GM foods might create toxins, allergies, nutritional problems, and new diseases that might be difficult to identify.
* Although they urged their superiors to require long-term tests on each GM variety prior to approval, the political appointees at the agency, including a former attorney for Monsanto, ignored the scientists. Official policy claims that the foods are no different and do NOT require safety testing.
* How could the government approve dangerous foods? A close examination reveals that industry manipulation and political collusion - not sound science - was the driving force.
* The World Health Organization, the British and American Medical Associations, and several other groups have expressed concern that if the "antibiotic resistant marker genes" used in GM foods got transferred to bacteria, it could create super-diseases that are immune to antibiotics.
see Dangers of Genetically Engineered Foods
http://www.responsibletechnology.org/GMFree/AboutGMFoods/DangersofGMFoods/index.cfm
Here's a couple of jaw-dropping articles about Monsanto:
Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto200805?printable=truetPage=all
Brave New Hay
http://www.hcn.org/issues/348/17054
what I don't understand is why they are FORCING France and Greece to lift the ban. I mean, I get why (because they're money hungry assholes who will do anything to make a buck, even if that means GM crops) but what is their logical reason? Do they have one?
sequoia, your capitalizing of the word 'FORCING' is exactly right. For a really good look at Monsanto, see the video 'The World According to Monsanto' http://www.organicconsumers.org/monlink.cfm
The power of this multinational corporation is proof-positive that we live in the American Corporate Empire - with its tendrils spread worldwide.
Here are a few of the 'dots' (courtesy of the above website). Connect them up and you will understand:
Prior to being the Supreme Court Judge who put GW Bush in office, Clarence Thomas was Monsanto's lawyer.
Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was on the Board of Directors of Monsanto's Searle pharmaceuticals.
Former US Secretary of Health,Tommy Thompson, received $50,000 in donations from Monsanto during his winning campaign for Wisconsin's governor.
The two congressmen receiving the most donations from Monsanto during the 2000 election were Larry Combest (Former Chairman of the House Agricultural Committee) and Missouri Senate candidate John Ashcroft (later to be named Attorney General).
From 1962 to 1970, the U.S. military sprayed 72 million liters of herbicides, mostly Agent Orange (Monsanto's product), on over one million Vietnamese civilians and over 100,000 U.S. troops.
Thanks to Monsanto's influence, the Center for Disease Control released a report claiming veterans were never exposed to harmful levels of Agent Orange.
For a lesson about how corporate propaganda works in the real world, see Monsanto's website:
"We apply innovation and technology to help farmers around the world produce more while conserving more. We help farmers grow yield sustainably so they can be successful, produce healthier foods, better animal feeds and more fiber, while also reducing agriculture's impact on our environment."
http://www.monsanto.com/
Of course the EU has a reason for forcing GM down the throats of the French & Greek people. The frenetic greed is "backed up" (camouflaged) by the "logic" of pooled purchasing power. The EU chimps-in-charge want to "play the big game well", that is, to reinforce the people's dependence on the institution, it must "succeed" at something, in this case to get the best "value" in the market for commercial seed, that being erroneously defined as the hightest weight of the grain output per euro spent on the seed.
This racket is riddled with flaws, which are easy to predict after recognizing the INTENT of the actors, and easy to appreciate by embracing intellectually and spiritually the miracle of life on our planet.
We don't need GM food. We have a great legacy of traditional and heirloom crop varieties that potentially provide maximum value in food production. The heirlooms are far more nutritious than the commercial crops, among many other benefits. The traditional growing of heirlooms is a dignified occupation, greatly benefiting the society, while growing commercial crops is a destructive serfdom.
Heirlooms fall short of their potential today only because heirloom growers lack scientific support at this time. As the society moves toward enlightenment it will apply lots of scientific energy to the selection of heirlooms to truly serve the public interests. The public interests do not include the concentration of power in the hands of a few, but rather require asset ownership and enterprise size limited to ten man-powers.
Heirlooms are selected to reliably pass on their desirable characteristics to their progeny to make hybrid commercial seed unnecessary. We don't want hybrid commercial because we don't want concentrated power to influence our food production or steal out output.
The "business plan" behind the elites' GM technology is ubiquitous having been part of the elites' "ivy league" business curriculum for decades. That is to "solve" "problems" (e.g. crop yield limitations) in ways that hook people into dependence on the elites. Instead, progressives promote approaches that empower the people, for example applying science to improve the heirlooms as noted above.
Large institutions such as the EU are like a crow bar. You can use it for good or you can use it for evil. Which will it be?
Has anyone ever died or gotten sick from GMO's?
Nope.
Has anyone ever died or gotten sick from pesticides?
Yep.
Joe Hope, do you take it upon yourself to defend every sinister cause on earth? I have no doubt that if the article here, and the commentary, were criticizing pesticides, you would take it upon yourself to defend them, too. Have you done any research on GMOs? I suggest you start by watching the documentary "The World According to Monsanto," with the link provided by Maragulian above, or at the following website: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/monsanto_movie080307. You will see that the only "testing" of GMOs that is cited by the producers of same was done either by them or by others with a vested interest in the product, and that the decision to go ahead with the development of biotech foods in the 1980s was made due to political pressure and without any significant scientific verification as to the safety of these foods. You will also see that in the independent testing that has been done since then, GMOs have produced cancers in lab animals. And we even have our own in-the-field proof of their nefarious effects in the disappearance of honeybees, which had been around since the beginning of time.
You are a troll, a paid monsanto troll!
Joehope: pls look at the facts before you form an opinion based on PR-spin...
1) INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE IS MADNESS if we look at the true costs...
• 1 000 tonnes of water are consumed to produce one tonne of grain
• 10 energy units are spent for every energy unit of food on our dinner table
• 1 000 energy units are used for every energy unit of processed food
• 17% of the total energy use in the United States goes into food production &
distribution, accounting for more than 20% of all transport within the country;
this excludes energy used in import & export
• 12.5 energy units are wasted for every energy unit of food transported per
thousand air-miles
• 20% of all greenhouse gases in the world come from current agriculture
• US$318 billion of taxpayer's money was spent to subsidize agriculture in OECD
countries in 2002, while more than 2 billion subsistence farmers in developing
countries tried to survive on $2 a day
• 90% of the agricultural subsidies benefit corporations and big farmers growing
food for export; while 500 family farms close down every week in the US
Source: http://www.indsp.org/SustainableWorldInitiative.php
2) ARSONISTS AS FIRE-FIGHTERS?
GM crops are promoted by the same companies that have profited from this perverted agrichemical, destructive) system: (Do you really think Monsanto would produce GM-seeds that reduced their own sale of pesticides?)
“..... the trend set forth by TNCs is to create broad international markets for a single product, thus creating the conditions for GENETIC UNIFORMITY in rural landscapes. In addition, patent protection and intellectual property rights espoused by GATT, inhibiting farmers from re-using, sharing and storing seeds raises the prospect that few varieties will dominate the seed market. Although a certain degree of crop uniformity may have certain economic advantages, it has two ecological drawbacks. First, history has shown that a huge area planted to a single cultivar is very vulnerable to a new, matching strain of a pathogen or pest. And, second, the widespread use of a single cultivar leads to a loss of genetic diversity.” .....
"We know from the history of agriculture that plant diseases, insect pests and weeds become more severe with the development of monoculture, and that intensively managed and genetically manipulated crops soon lose genetic diversity (Altieri, 1994, Robinson, 1996).
Given these facts, there is NO REASON to believe that resistance to transgenic crops will not evolve among insects, weeds and pathogens, as has happened with pesticides. No matter what resistance management strategies will be used, pests will adapt and overcome the agronomic constraints (Green et al., 1990). Diseases and pests have always been amplified by changes toward homogeneous agriculture.”
Source: The Environmental Risks of Transgenic Crops) http://www.pmac.net/miguel.htm
"You cannot define the function of genes without defining the influence of the environment. The notion that one gene equals one disease, or that one gene produces one key protein, is flying out of the window."
Comments from Dr. J. Craig Venter, Time's Scientist of the year (2000)
3) GENETIC ENGINEERING IS BASED ON FALSE ASSUMPTIONS:
1. Each gene is an independent unit of information. Each gene adds one trait to the build-up and behaviour of the organism.
2. The information of each gene is expressed straightforwardly without any kind of interaction.
3. The genes are stable. They do not change unless mutations occur because of damage such as radioactive irradiation. Therefore the genes are normally passed to the next generation without any changes.
4. Genes or sets of genes cannot change in response to the environment.
According to these assumptions of genetic determinism it is meaningful to hunt genes that cause undesirable properties and it is as well meaningful to insert new and desirable genes in an organism in order to "tailor" "better" organisms. But all these basic assumptions of genetic determinism have been contradicted by recent scientific findings. The new view ("fluid genome") is that the expression of each gene is the result of interaction with the totality of the internal and external environment.
Genes are variable, changing their behaviour and even their structure because of influences from other genes or because of influences from the conditions in the cell and the environment. So a gene is not a context-independent carrier of a specific property as was commonly believed when genetic engineering was invented over 20 years ago. Insertion of a gene to a different species may therefore give unpredictable effects.
Because of the context dependence of a gene it is impossible to predict and master the effects of gene insertion. It may seem that the desired property has been added to the new food plant. But in addition, a number of unexpected other changes may have occurred. There are also other factors that add to the likeliness of unexpected changes . - Including possible appearance of some harmful substance that may be difficult to detect reliably because of the limitations of present safety assessment technologies."
Source: ISIS
More Information:
http://www.greenpeace.org.br/transgenicos/pdf/beyond_substantial_equivalence.pdf
http://www.psrast.org/intro1.htm
http://www.soilassociation.org/Web/SA/saweb.nsf/9f788a2d1160a9e580256a71002a3d2b/9ce8a24d75d3f65980256c370031a2d0/$FILE/SeedsOfDoubt.pdf
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GM_Food_Nightmare_Unfolding.php
"Science is (used to be?) organized knowledge. Nature is organized wisdom."
Immanuel Kant
Superb post, toqueville.
Frankenstein Foods so typically ameriKan. First force them to grow the freaky fodder, then take away their rights to use their own natural seeds as is happening all over ameriKa with the war on seed cleaners. Then feed them a coctail of lethal chemicals and kill them. Sounds like the Kissinger Plan.It has worked exceptionally "well" in iraq where corpo troops and mercenaries not only looted the museums and sites of an ancient culture but also systematically destroyed some of the oldest seed banks in the world. More feudal every day thanks to the science of evil.
Monsanto, Cargill, Haliburton, Haliburton, MacDonald Douglas, Raytheon all daughters of the Great Satan.
No wonder the world loves us to death!
Onward thru the crop spraying to our final and glorious titanic destiny with Cap'n O Bama aka Al Jolson!
All you have to do is see what this Monster is doing to farmers in India and in the MidWest to seed harvesters. They are gangsters, thugs and a cancer on the earth. They will do anything to control the world's food supply. That's why many of us are buying and saving seeds. It's only a matter of time before they will determine who lives and who dies. Beware! And be afraid! These people are EVIL.
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