"I confess that I picked up this book with a certain jadedness: after working with breaking GM news for several years, I didn't think there was much more that a book could tell me that my non-scientist's brain could also make sense of. How wrong I was.
Jeffrey Smith, who used to work for a GM testing company, has written the story of the GM foods scam in an account that is as compelling as it is lucid. Once I'd started it, I couldn't put it down. Smith has an extraordinary gift for writing about this complex and highly technical subject in prose that romps along as effortlessly as a railway station novelette -- but without compromising one iota of journalistic integrity or scientific rigour."
Claire Robinson's GM WATCH review of SEEDS OF DEEPTION http://www.mindfully.org/GE/2003/Seeds-Of-Deception-Review5dec03.htm
JEFFREY SMITH UK TOUR DATES
Monday May 3
MATHRY(Nr Fishguard)
5p.m. - late + members of GMFree Cymru
Mathry Community Hall Pembrokeshire
Contact: Chris Samra Tibberts This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Tuesday May 4
CARDIFF
12.30 - 2.00 p.m. + Dr Vyvyan Howard
Welsh Assembly
Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Langlands-Brown, Rachael (AM
Support Staff))
Wednesday May 5 7.00 8.30 p.m.
EDINBURGH
National Library of Scotland (Exhibition Hall),
Contact Scottish Green MSPs Office 0131 348 6363
Thursday May 6 7.30 p.m.
FINDHORN
Upper Community Centre, The Park Findhorn
Contact: Gordon McAlpine This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Saturday May 8 5.00 p.m.
ARDERSIER, INVERNESS
Highland Green Gathering, Kylerona Farm, Ardersier Inverness
Contact: Donny MacLeod This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Or Myra Carus This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Monday May 10
LONDON
7.00 9.00 p.m + Rt. Hon. Michael Meacher MP
Chair: Zac Goldsmith, The Ecologist
The Meeting Place, Drummond Street, London NW 1
Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Tuesday May 11
BRISTOL
7.30 9.30 p.m.
Meeting Room 1, University of Bristol Union Building,
Contact; Bristol Genetix Group 0117 927 6322
Wednesday May 12th
TAUNTON
7.00 9.00 p.m.
Committee Room, Municipal Hall, Taunton, Somerset
Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Thursday May 13th
TOTNES
7.00 9.00 p.m.
Chairman" John Sherrell, FARM
Civic Hall, Totnes, Devon
Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Friday May 14th
NORWICH
7.30 9.30 p.m.
Chair: Professor Tim O’Riordan
Environmental Sciences, UEA
Assembly House, Norwich, Norfolk
Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
For more information please contact Amanda at Green Books 01803 864013
wwww.greenbooks.co.uk
SEEDS OF DECEPTION
Exposing Corporate and Government Lies about the Safety of Genetically Engineered Food
Jeffrey M. Smith Foreword by Michael Meacher
Published April 2004 £9.95
"Seeds of Deception is a major event in informing the public about the safety or (more precisely the lack of it) of genetically modified foods, which are hailed to be one of the most important scientific developments of our age. In contrast to the bland assurances from official propaganda, the book lays bare the concerted machinations of the biotechnology industry, the media, politicians and the regulatory authorities, all united in their effort and using any means to allay the rightful concerns and fears of the public about this unpredictable and unsafe technology."
-Arpad Pusztai, Ph.D. Leading Expert on Safety Research conducted on GM Foods
Worldwide industry manipulation and political collusion, rather than sound science, have brought genetically engineered food into our daily diet. Seeds of Deception reveals that company research is rigged, alarming evidence of health dangers is covered up, and that political and corporate bullying form the seedy background to the spread of GM crops. Seeds of Deception shows that:
* Scientists have been offered bribes or threatened. Evidence has been stolen, and critical data has been omitted from research reports or distorted.
* Government employees who complained have been harassed, stripped of responsibilities, or fired.
* Laboratory rats fed a GM crop developed stomach lesions, and seven of the forty rats died within two weeks. The crop was approved without further tests.
* When top scientist Arpad Pusztai of the Rowett Institute in Aberdeen tried to alert the public about his alarming discoveries, he lost his job and was silenced with threats of a lawsuit.
Seeds of Deception includes the internal memos by US Food & Drug Administration scientists which warn of toxins, allergies, and new diseases; all these memos were ignored by their superiors, who included a former lawyer for Monsanto. The book also reveals how industry studies are designed to avoid finding problems; and that the US FDA withheld information from Congress after a genetically modified supplement killed nearly a hundred people and disabled thousands.
If you think that GM food is safe, this book will change your mind.
Jeffrey M. Smith has worked in the field of genetically modified (GM) foods for nearly a decade. In 1998 he ran for US Congress to raise public awareness of their health and environmental impacts. He is the founder and director of the Institute for Responsible Technology. ISBN 1 903998 41 7 226 x 150mm 304pp
SEEDS OF DECEPTION Foreword by Michael Meacher MP
This is a brilliant book which combines shrewd dissection of the true nature of GM technology, a devastating critique of the health and environmental hazards of GM crops, and scarifying examples of the manipulation of both science and the media by the biotech industry. Despite the British Government's GM Nation Debate in mid-2003, the level of understanding of GM remains alarmingly low in the UK. This book should be compulsory reading, not only for the general public, but even more so for the decision-makers who have never been exposed to systematic analysis of the problems created by GM.
What is so exciting about this book is that it is no dry text of scientific exegesis-it positively fizzes with the human drama of the cabals and conspiracies behind the scenes which have littered the history of Big Biotech in its frantic efforts to get itself accepted. It is meticulously documented and powerfully written, somewhere between a documentary and a thriller.
It reveals above all that GM is not some arcane issue about science or technology-it is ultimately about power. There are no consumer benefits from GM crops, the alleged benefits to farmers are deeply disputed, environmental and health testing has never been carried out, non-GM farmers are being put seriously at risk. So why is GM being pressed at all? The answer, set out painstakingly and frighteningly in this book, tells us a great deal about how power is exercised today-funding political parties and key individuals, networking around opinion-formers and decision-makers, and fixing strategic job swaps between the biotech industry and Government. And this is not just conjecture; plenty of examples are given which illustrate how secretive and malign these influences are.
The main area of cover-up is undoubtedly the GM effects on health. It is a staggering fact that there have been virtually no clinical or biochemical tests of the impacts of eating GM foods on human health. Jeffrey Smith sets out, like a detective story, the unravelling of the L-tryptophan fiasco, the StarLink maize allergy mishap, and the cauliflower mosaic virus promoter hazard, as well as a host of other health risks, both predicted and unpredictable.
But the kernel of the book is the commercialization of politics and the politicization of science. For those who still believe the constitutional fantasy that governments act in accordance with their manifesto in the general interests of society, this book will come as a shocker. The exercise of power today is much more hard-nosed and ruthless, and the power-brokers are not the electorate, but Big Business. As a case study of this suborning of democratic accountability, Jeffrey Smith's account is an eye-opener. But most of all it is a call to arms, not only to prevent the contamination of the nation's food supply, but even more to tackle the poisoning of the nation's decision-making system by the undercover wielding of economic and financial muscle and PR manipulativeness of Big Biotech.
March 2004
Rt. Hon. Michael Meacher MP was Minister of State for the Environment from 1997 to June 2003. He has served longer as a minister and opposition spokesman than anyone in the current government, having been on the front bench for 27 of the past 30 years since Harold Wilson appointed him a junior industry minister in 1974.