H17504
Headlines : EnvironmentThousands of Protesters March Against GM Crops at UN Summit
The conference, which starts on Monday, precedes a bigger summit next week on biodiversity in Bonn where some 4,000 international experts and government ministers will try to agree on ways to slow the rate of extinctions.
Also see:
Biotech Giants Leverage Global Woes for Seed Hegemony
Corporations Grab Climate Genes
[Posted By ShiftShapers]Republished from Reuters
BERLIN – About 5,000 activists marched through the German city of Bonn on Monday to protest against genetically modified food at the start of a U.N. conference to discuss risks linked to the technology.Campaigners, many waving colorful flags and banners with slogans such as “Biofuel Creates Hunger” and “Good Food Instead Of GM Food”, walked and danced through the western German city. Some drove tractors and floats.
“We are protesting for biodiversity and against the destruction of nature, against GM, for the protection of biodiversity,” activist Amira Busch told Reuters Television.About 2,000 government and non-governmental officials will attend the five-day U.N. conference in Bonn to discuss global protection measures for the transfer of genetically modified plants, including rice and soya.The issue has become particularly sensitive due to a recent surge in food prices which has sparked anger and protests in some developing countries.
The experts will try to agree on ways to help implement a U.N. agreement on the trading of living genetically modified organisms called the Cartagena protocol.
In Europe, consumers are fairly skeptical about GM crops but the biotech industry says its products are as safe as non-GM equivalents.
The conference, which starts on Monday, precedes a bigger summit next week on…
Posted by ShiftShapers
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Europe’s bad harvest European Union officials continue to refuse to let the World Trade Organisation save them from themselves. In spite of a 2005 WTO ruling that some European countries were breaking international trade rules by prohibiting the import of gene-spliced, or genetically modified (GM), crops and foods, Europe remains recalcitrant, unrepentant – and on the verge of slaughtering its own livestock industry. (Henry Miller & Gregory Conko, the Guardian)
Henry Miller, a physician and fellow at the Hoover Institution, headed the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology from 1989 to 1993. Gregory Conko is director of food safety policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Barron’s selected their book, The Frankenfood Myth, as one of the 25 Best Books of 2004.
You may well ask yourselves why I posted that up…
I’ve got to admit that I didn’t read it, just assumed that coming from Comment is Free it would be reasonably valid.
Turns out, it’s not as far as I can tell.
Even worse, the developing nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America, which once anticipated that agricultural and food biotechnology could provide them a brighter and more self-sufficient future, will continue to be shut out of the important European market by policymakers’ callous obstructions.
Wow. That’s a warped reading of the effect of U.S. and European trade subsidies on market access for third world producers.
Anyhow, it contributes to the debate I guess.