“Devastating impact” of GM crops ignored

A number of people in the UK were shocked at the pro-GMO bias of articles in the Independent newspaper this week.

The letter below was sent by a group of academics and NGO representatives in an attempt to redress the balance. We've added in square brackets some signatories that the Independent omitted.
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The other side of GM story

Letters to the editor, The Independent, 26 Mar 2015
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/letters/letters-when-the-pm-backs-a-bully-like-jeremy-clarkson-what-hope-is-there-10136874.html

Your articles on GM crops have read like advertorials for the industry. It is astonishing that, in featuring Monsanto, you appear to ignore the evidence of the devastating impact of the corporation’s GM herbicide-tolerant crops across North and South America on people and the environment.

The use of glyphosate herbicide on Monsanto’s GM maize and soy (most used as animal feed and biofuels, not food) has increased exponentially as resistant weeds have emerged. This herbicide is linked to the severe decline of the Monarch butterfly across the US, and this week the World Health Organization classified it as a probable human carcinogen.

You appear to have accepted the industry’s misleading claim that GM crops are needed to feed a growing global population. People are hungry today because they do not have access to nutritious food – lacking either the money to buy it or the land or other means to grow it – not because of an insufficiency of food produced, GM or otherwise.

As the US Department of Agriculture states, there is no consistent evidence to show that GM crops increase crop yield.

The real scandal is not opposition to GM crops, but why GM continues to get funding and political support when it is failing to deliver; when the plethora of innovative and sustainable agricultural practices delivering real solutions for farmers, communities and the environment globally get minimal support.

Clare Oxborrow
Friends of the Earth

Peter Melchett
Soil Association

Professor Andy Stirling
Sussex University

Professor Brian Wynne
Lancaster University

Claire Robinson
GM Watch

Liz O’Neill
GM Freeze

Pat Thomas
Beyond GM

Mike Small
Fife Diet

Colin Tudge
Campaign for Real Farming

[Lawrence Woodward
Citizens against GMOs

Dr Brian John
GM-Free Cymru

Sally Beare
Mums Say No to GMOs]