"If the Holy See supports GE foods many Catholics around the world will feel that the Catholic Church has abandoned them..." - The General Council of the Missionary Society of St Columban
http://www.columban.com

For where to fax your concerns about the Vatican-US conference:
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4372
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http://www.columban.com/letter_to_vat_re_conference.htm
General Council - Missionary Society of St Columban

Letter to President, Pontifical Academy of Sciences
Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo

The President,
The Pontifical Academy of Sciences,
Casina Pio IV,
V- 00120 Vatican City.

September 14, 2004

Dear President,

We, the General Council of the Missionary Society of St Columban, write to express our concern about the seminar that the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See, in cooperation with the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, is hosting at the Gregorian University in Rome on September 24th, 2004.

We are greatly concerned that the seminar may add the moral authority of the Hoy See to the efforts of agribusiness companies to promote genetically engineered (GE) foods.

The flyer promoting the event claims that, since humankind has developed genetically engineered crops that can resist extreme weather, disease and pests, there is a moral obligation on everyone to promote GE food in order to banish hunger and starvation.

In reality famine and hunger around the world have more to do with the absence of land reform, social inequality, biases against women in many cultures, a lack of access to cheap credit, and basic agricultural technologies, rather than with a scarcity of super seeds. This fact was recognized and accepted at the World Food Summit in Rome in November 1996. The participants acknowledged that the main causes of hunger are economic and social.

Our main concern about GE crops is that it will give enormous control of the staple foods of the world to a handful of Northern agribusiness companies. Margot Wallstrom, the European environment commissioner, made this convincing point when she said at a conference in London in October 2003, that, far from developing GE crops to solve the problem of starvation in the world, as they claimed, the biotech companies did so to solve starvation amongst their shareholders.

As a missionary Society working with poor people in 14 countries throughout the world we believe it will be a tragedy if the Holy See listens to and supports multinational corporations who seek profit above all else. We urge the Holy See to listen rather to the voice of countless Christian communities and their leaders in the Third World who are opposed to genetically engineered foods. We fear that these voices will not be heard at the forthcoming Conference.

If the Holy See supports GE foods many Catholics around the world will feel that the Catholic Church has abandoned them in favour of giant biotech corporations which are poised to make billions of dollars selling patented GE seeds.

We wish to register our opposition to any endorsement of GM crops by the Holy See, including the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Yours sincerely,

Fr Brendan O'Sullivan
Superior General

Council
Frs Neil Magill, Kevin O’Neill, Frank Hoare and Noel Mackey

Missionary Society of St Columban