GM may be on the agenda at the G20 summit
Mark Handerson
The Times, April 1 2009
http://tiny.cc/7f45D

As the G20 meet and the world groans under the triple whammy of the food, fuel and financial crises, scientists have announced a remarkable breakthrough that they hope will make the agenda of the G20 leaders at their summit in London today.

A new genetically modified super maize is said to have the potential to not only ensure an unending era of cheap food but to make the world's food supply far more nutritious, while providing low cost energy, reducing environmental degradation, and promoting sustainable agriculture. 

The GM maize is the remarkable outcome of a project that has been kept under wraps for nearly a decade. The new super maize, which should begin field trials within the next two years, is also the result of an unusual alliance of all the major biotechnology companies. It is said to involve the most ambitious use of multi-stacked genes to date, and has already been dubbed "a multi F-ing super food", because of its ability to feed, fuel and fortify the world, while helping to undercut the financial crisis.

In a press release Hugh Grant, Monsanto's CEO, commented, "Not only do one in three people go to bed every night malnourished and not knowing where their next meal will come from, but many of us can barely afford to run our hummers. While not in anyway a silver bullet, this is a remarkable breakthrough in terms of putting plentiful ultra-nutritious food on the world's table while eliminating environmental overload and petroleum dependence on often hostile foreign powers." 

Although exact details of the project and its timetable for delivery still remain sketchy for the moment, Prof. Pingo Detritus, who's been heading up the international project, said, "This breakthrough is of such monumental importance, that it's vital that the G20 leaders now unite behind this inspirational global endeavour and start to remove all regulatory barriers to genetically modified crops. Critics of GM foods also need to abandon their doctrinaire fact-free opposition to this life-saving technology."

A spokesperson for the Biotechnology Industry Organization in Washington D.C. said, "We don't need regulation of our friends in the banking sector, and we don't need regulation of a technology that can feed, fuel and heal the world. The G20 leaders need to recognise that GM, while not being the single answer to all our problems, is the solution to the world's most pressing needs. It can also provide the kind of economic stimulus for the global economy that our members feel would be most appropriate."