The Director-General of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Dr Per Pinstrup-Andersen, is continuing his GM propaganda spree downunder, now attacking food labelling amongst much else, saying:
"moves to have GM products labelled in Australia would result in enormous administrative problems... What do you label?... In my opinion what's currently available in the market in the United States - and 50 to 70 per cent has been associated with genetically modified products somewhere along the line - none of that causes any negative health effects."
What is still more questionable are claims like the following:
"Dr Pinstrup-Andersen said the debate over GM foods in Australia and Europe also had an effect on food-poor nations in western Africa. He said with ongoing debates about GM foods in developed countries, scientists struggled to get research money to develop products which could help solve world food problems."
In reality, relative to alternative agricultural strategies, money has poured into biotech and other approaches have consequently often been starved of resources or even allowed to wither for lack of funding. Just compare the claims of Pinstrup-Andersen (and those of the scientists in item 2 below) with what Dr Hans Herren reports from Kenya where he is clear that it is finding serious funding for non-biotech projects, no matter how vital, that has become the difficulty:
[from: http://members.tripod.com/~ngin/179.htm]
‘Hans Herren, director of the ICIPE, won the World food prize in 1995 because he and his team could get control over the cassava mealy bug, that was endangering the staplecrop cassava in large areas of Africa (from Senegal to Moçambique) and threatening some 300 million people. They got control over the bug with the help of a small wasp””without chemistry, and without any extra costs for the farmers.
‘Thoughtfully, Hans Herren says: “Today, I probably would not get the money for such a big programme. Today, **all funds go into biotechnology and genetic engineering**. The genetic people would try to construct a cassava that is resistant against the mealy-bug. Biological pest-control, as we do it here at the ICIPE, is not as spectacular, not as sexy. I see a big problem here.” [emphasis added]
This is EXACTLY the same story that emerged from a recent article about funding of US university research, focusing particularly on UC Berkeley.
‘ “Molecular biology and genetic engineering have clearly risen as the preferred approach to solving our problems, and that’s where the resources are going. New buildings have gone up, and these departments are expanding, while the organismic areas of science””which emphasize a more ecological approach””are being downsized” says Dahlstan [who] once chaired Berkeley’s world-renowned Division of Biological Control. Today that division, along with the Department of Plant Pathology and more than half of all faculty positions in entomology, are gone””in part, many professors believe, because there are no profits in such work. “You can’t patent the natural organisms and ecological understanding used in biological control,” Andy Gutierrez, a Berkeley entomologist, explains. “However, if you look at public benefit, that division provided billions of dollars annually to the state of California and the world.’ [http://members.tripod.com/~ngin/JM063.htm]
Meanwhile, as we reported on Monday, the Director-General of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) is able to avail himself of a mjor platform for pontificating on sustainable food security courtesy of Aventis, Cargill and Syngenta among others. Starved of resources - don't think so!
Pinstrup-Andersen is not an unintelligent man but his increasingly naked propagandising for biotech raises serious doubts about his credibility.
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Boffins label GM food labelling as 'hypocrisy'
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/sci_tech/story_7562.asp
Labelling all genetically modified (GM) foods would be practically impossible and hypocritical, biotechnology experts said on Monday.
Canberra-based Centre for the Application of Molecular Biology to International Agriculture executive director Richard Jefferson said there were far more pressing food safety issues than those posed by GM foods. "What do we want to label it for? If people are interested in food safety why don't we deal with all the safety issues in food?" Dr Jefferson told reporters at a biotechnology conference here.
"We have about 1,000 people around the world die from eating peanuts each year which don't have a label. I question the hypocrisy." Dr Jefferson said GM crops could cut out the need for many insecticides and herbicides, which created bigger health and environmental concerns than genetic modification. "Are we really concerned about safety and the environment and health of foods or are we being fatuous hypocrites?" he said. "If (anti-GM campaigners) say they're spraying because it's natural, so is anthrax, so is polio and I don't think natural is all that much of a spin."
Dr Jefferson said testing procedures for GM products were also extremely expensive and keeping them separate from non-GM products would require two different lots of transport and storage systems. Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) director-general Per Pinstrup-Andersen said moves to have GM products labelled in Australia would result in enormous administrative problems.
"What do you label? If you feed a cow on GM soy beans, do you label the milk?" Dr Pinstrup-Andersen said. "If a roll has GM soy beans do you label the roll? If you have oil made from GM corn, which has none of the protein in it, should that be labelled? Dr Pinstrup-Andersen said he did not know if Australia had an answer to such questions. "In my opinion what's currently available in the market in the United States - and 50 to 70 per cent has been associated with genetically modified products somewhere along the line - none of that causes any negative health effects."
Dr Pinstrup-Andersen said the debate over GM foods in Australia and Europe also had an effect on food-poor nations in western Africa. He said with ongoing debates about GM foods in developed countries, scientists struggled to get research money to develop products which could help solve world food problems.
"There's a direct extrapolation from not wanting genetically modified food in Europe to not helping developing countries develop the solutions they need using modern science," he said. Dr Pinstrup-Andersen said relatively well-off countries such as Australia should consider that the extra yields that could be gained from crops using GM techniques could mean life or death to millions of Africans. "If we decide GM is unhealthy for consumers here we can't turn around and say it's good enough for developing countries, and the research will cease," he said.
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Media attacked over GM food's negative publicity
http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/research/2001/01/item20010123081901_1.htm
ABC News online
The media has been criticised for harming the level of agricultural investment by creating a wave of negative publicity on the issue of genetically modified (GM) food.
A panel of international and Australian scientists in Adelaide says agricultural research is suffering because funding towards bio-technical research has decreased in the past few years.
The scientists fear the stigma attached to GM foods and research is preventing finding solutions to poverty and starvation in the developing world.
Dr Richard Jefferson of Australia's Centre for the Application of Molecular Biology to International Agriculture says sensational media reporting such as glib newspaper headlines carries much of the blame.
"They won't read your text - they read your headline and they see that and they tar all of science with the brush of bio-tech and there's a lot of ways to do this kind of work that are transgenical or not," he said.
"But the point is much of it is important to good science but almost of all of that is being threatened by the hysteria, the anti-science hysteria."
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Donald J. Johnston of the OECD
"...with modern biotechnology the world has discovered a vast new field which is full of potential for creative activity and, for the scientific community at least, patentable and profitable innovations."
...
Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet:
“There is a great deal of potential research investment in the UK that could come from food technology industries, and any concerns about the safety of these foods could jeopardise this huge investment. So I can understand why scientists would be very anxious about jeopardising that investment.” (Channel 4 News, Friday 15 October 1999)
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University-of-Guelph-based agronomist E. Ann Clark:
“History has shown that meaningful assessment of cost as well as benefit issues is unlikely when technology assessment is provided by proponents who have a clear vested interest in the adoption of the technology.”