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GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOOD GM FOODS DEBATE TAKES CENTRE STAGE IN THE UK Summary of recent developments, March 1999In the first three months of 1999 public debate about GM foods has taken centre stage in Britain. Everyone in the country who follows the news knows about the risks of GM foods and the issues surrounding them, while opinion polls show that the great majority of the population do not want them. The Natural Law Party can take much credit for this situation. It has been publicising the risks of GM foods since 1996 and was the first organisation in the UK to call for an outright ban. Its fact sheet on the dangers of GM foods, first produced in 1996, has been used by many other organisations and members of the public unconnected with the party. The Natural Law Party is widely acknowledged as having given impetus to the debate on GM foods and acted as a catalyst for other organisations. It was the Natural Law Party that announced to the press in September 1996 that GM soya had been passed for use in the UK, that the first shipment from the USA was due the next month, and that since it would be unsegregated from non-GM soya it could be included in up to 60% of processed foods in the UK, without being labelled. The Natural Law Party has since then consistently been involved in raising public awareness of this issue. Events of 1999This year GM foods came dramatically to public attention in late January 1999 with the publication of a statement signed by 126 influential food writers and journalists, condemning the use of GM foods. This initiative was promoted by the environmental organisation Greenpeace. One week later, GM foods again came to the fore suddenly in a parliamentary debate on 3rd February. Joan Walley, an MP from the governing Labour Party (but not herself a minister in the government), voiced her concerns about GM foods and the tactics of the biotechnology industry. She told the House about the tryptophan incident in the USA, in which 37 died and 1500 were permanently disabled after eating a food supplement produced by GM bacteria. Her concerns were shared by MPs from all parties who spoke that day, apart from the government minister responsible. The same afternoon, the leader of the Opposition, William Hague, challenged the Prime Minister over GM foods, and asked him why he did not impose a three-year moratorium on the commercial release of GM crops as the government had been advised to do by English Nature, an official advisory organisation. During the week that followed, three major national newspapers started campaigns to inform the public about the risks of genetically modified food. Two of these declared themselves in favour of a ban or a moratorium. The phrase 'Frankenstein foods' is now being used widely by all popular newspapers (a reference to the fictional scientist Frankenstein who set out to create a human being but ended up with a monster that he could not control). The controversy surrounding Dr Arpad Pusztai's findings On 12 February the debate went into a higher gear when a press conference was held in the House of Commons announcing that 20 internationally acclaimed scientists supported the findings of Dr Arpad Pusztai, a geneticist working at a government laboratory in Scotland who the previous year had unexpectedly discovered that rats who were fed GM potatoes incurred significant damage to the immune system and reduced organ growth. Dr Pusztai, who worked in the government-funded Rowett Institute in Aberdeen, had spoken about his findings, which were preliminary but significant, in a television interview in August 1998. Within a few days, his contract with the Institute was discontinued and he was forbidden to speak about his findings. The head of the Institute who had initially supported Dr Pusztai, now claimed he had muddled the data. Dr Pusztai's findings, although still preliminary, clearly illustrate the risks of GM food. The potatoes he was testing had had a gene for a particular natural insecticide inserted - a protein known as lectin, produced by a flower (the snowdrop). Dr Pusztai has published over 200 papers on lectin, and has a world reputation. The rats who ate potato mixed together with lectin suffered no ill effects. But the rats who ate the potatoes into which the lectin had been genetically engineered, became ill. Dr Pusztai sums up the situation as follows: two harmless substances, potato and lectin, were found to become toxic after genetic modification. Dr. Pusztai is the first world renowned scientist whose research findings question the use of genetic engineering as a whole, and it is significant that he is at heart not an opponent of genetic engineering. His experiment had not been done to see if the potatoes were safe as human food, but to devise a way of testing for safety in general, as part of a project set up by the government. The findings surprised Dr Pusztai as much as anyone else: 'I was totally taken aback,' he told the press. 'I was absolutely confident that I would not find anything, but the longer I spent on the experiment the more uneasy I became. I believe in the technology. But it is too new for us to be absolutely sure that what we are doing is right.' Government on the defensiveThe result of these developments was astonishing. GM foods now became front-page news almost every day. There were numerous television and radio debates, chat shows, phone-ins etc., all over the country, telephone polls by newspapers and other organisations. The Government became on the defensive, following widespread criticism of its pro-GM stance and the easy access the biotech lobby has to government departments. The Minister of Science in charge of biotechnology, Lord Sainsbury, and members of approval committees have all been shown to have strong links to biotech companies. There were repeated calls for Lord Sainsbury to resign. A report appeared in the newspapers that Prince Charles, who has spoken out strongly against GM food several times in the past two years, had been requested by the government to remove a page from his own Internet web site inviting people's comments on GM food. Most newspapers were very critical of the Government position on GM foods, pointing out that they were completely out of tune with the population. Meanwhile the Prime Minister himself, Tony Blair, was accused of having been pressured by President Clinton to allow the American giant biotechnology company Monsanto to operate unimpeded in Britain. In an attempt to quell public concern, Blair announced that he himself would be happy to eat GM foods and insisted that he would not halt or slow down the introduction of GM foods. The following day Blair was featured on the front page of the popular tabloid (Labour!) newspaper The Mirror as a Frankenstein monster, with the caption 'The Prime Monster'. Greenpeace dumped 4 tons of GM soya outside the gates of No 10 Downing Street, the Prime Ministers residence, declaring that this was the only address in the country where the resident actually wanted to eat GM food! The Prime Minister's response was to defend GM foods even more strongly. New research findings add fuel to the debate While all this was going on, more research continued to come to light on the risks of GM crops and foods. A study by Europe's leading specialists on food sensitivity, the York Nutritional Laboratory in northern England, found that allergy and digestion problems caused by soya had increased significantly in the past two year, rising from 14th to 9th place in the list of leading allergens. As this period coincided with the widespread introduction of GM soya into processed foods, researchers at the Laboratory felt that these findings raised serious new questions about the safety of GM foods. Government studies at the Scottish Crop Institute showed dangers to insects. Genetically modified potato plants were fed to aphids which were in turn fed to ladybirds. The ladybirds' lives were shortened by up to half the expected life-span, and their fertility and egg-laying was significantly reduced. The National Pollen Research Unit released a study commissioned by the Soil Association - the organisation in Britain which certifies food as organic - showing that GM pollen could travel hundreds of miles and cross pollinate with non-GM strains. This finding, obvious to anyone with common sense, highlighted the inadequacy of present government regulations which stipulate that 200 metres is far enough to avoid cross-pollination between GM crops and neighbouring fields. Newspaper reports claimed that the British Diabetic Association, whose role is to protect the interests of diabetic patients, had withheld evidence that some patients who were fed GM insulin suffered a deterioration in health. Shift in public opinion reflected in policy changes by large organisations Bowing to pressure from public opinion, seven of the eight major supermarket chains have now changed their policy on GM foods, five of them imposing a complete ban on GM ingredients in their own-brand products, and all of them insisting on better labelling in their stores. These stores include Sainsbury's, owned by the family of the Science Minister Lord Sainsbury, and Asda, which is owned by the Conservative MP Archie Norman. One of the supermarkets is Marks and Spencer, which has stores throughout Europe and which sells no products other than its own brands; in other words, the store will be entirely free of GM products. A precedent was set last year by Iceland, the biggest retailer of frozen foods, which banned GM foods from its own-brand products after receiving hundreds of letters from the public, many of them written by supporters of the Natural Law Party. British Sugar, the national producer and processor of sugar beet, is refusing to use GM beet and has no plans to use GM materials. A spokesman for Novartis, a biotechnology company, said the company was unwilling to push ahead with commercial growing of GM crops without more evidence of the impact on the environment. In response to consumer demand in Britain and elsewhere, the US giant miller and food processor Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) has announced a new 'identity-preserved' programme for its soya protein products based on segregation of non-GM soya beans. This move away from GM soya by ADM, which describes itself as 'Supermarket to the World', marks a significant shift away from the position maintained up to now by Monsanto and other biotech companies in the USA that it was not possible to segregate GM and non-GM soya. The Local Government Association, an advisory body to the 500 local and regional authorities in Britain, recommended in February that all of them should impose a five-year ban on the use of GM foods in their institutions, including schools, retirement homes and child-care homes, and meal services for the elderly and disabled. Many local authorities have already stopped using GM foods. The Consumer Association, which seeks to represent the interests of consumers and has so far focused mainly on the need for better labelling of GM foods, has recently issued a statement calling for no more GM foods to be introduced until the government's approval system addresses concerns about the long-term safety of genetically modified foods. The prestigious Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) has warned that farmers planting genetically modified crops risk a fall in land values and has called for a national register to be established showing all fields where GM crops have been grown. The Soil Association, the organisation for organic farmers, which normally receives about 1000 inquiries per year from farmers wishing to change from intensive chemical farming, suddenly received over 100 requests in one week. One of the logical results of inadequate labelling of GM foods is that the only way to avoid them is to eat organic food. This fact has not been lost on the press and the general public. In March, in response to increasing public and scientific concern about Dr Pusztai's findings, the government set up a special parliamentary hearing to look into the implications of his experiment and the circumstances surrounding his subsequent dismissal. This too was reported widely in the press. The government itself has moved significantly, although it has officially not abandoned its pro-GM stance. In March Lord Sainsbury surprised everyone by suggesting a three-year freeze on the commercial growing of GM crops, though the government subsequently denied that this was official policy. The government's official position is that there is a moratorium on the commercial growing of GM crops until spring 2000. The demand for organic produce in Britain has far outstripped the supply, with the result that 70% of organic food has to be imported from abroad. In response to this, the government has announced is going to double its subsidies to British farmers who wish to convert to organic farming. The government is also setting up a fully independent Food Standards Agency in order to protect consumers' interests. The result will be that food safety issues will be kept separate from the Ministry of Agriculture, which is perceived as representing more the commercial interests of farmers and the biotechnology industry than those of consumers. Natural Law Party's roleDuring the recent surge in publicity, the Natural Law Party has spoken on local and national radio, spoken to MPs including leaders of other parties, and written to newspapers. This month (March 1999) the Natural Law Party released a video on the dangers of GM foods, with contributions from genetics scientist Dr Michael Antoniou, director of the Soil Association Patrick Holden who is one Britain's most respected environmentalists, health food wholesaler Craig Sams, and Dr Geoffrey Clements and Dr Reinhard Borowitz, leaders of the Natural Law Party respectively in the UK and worldwide. Natural Law Party leader Dr Geoffrey Clements was invited to speak at one of a special series of conferences on genetic engineering organised by students at the University of London, on a panel with distinguished scientists including Nobel Peace Prize winner Sir Joseph Rotblad. On 8 March in the Houses of Parliament, the Natural Law Party held a scientific briefing for MPs on GM food, resulting in an invitation to meet regularly and share further ideas with some of the MPs present. One of those MPs was David Drew, who had recently spoken at a rally organised in Stroud (in the West of England) by Dr Henry Brighouse, the Natural Law Party representative in that area, in conjunction with other groups. The rally has led to a widely supported campaign for a GM-free Stroud. In addition to this formal briefing, Natural Law Party candidates and supporters have been writing and speaking to MPs individually throughout the past three years on the risks of GM food, as well as informing the public as a whole. The following are just a sample of the numerous articles from national newspapers.Selection of front page items: Alarm over Frankenstein foods. (Daily
Telegraph 12.2.99) Other articles: Labour pays GM giants
to expand in UK (Independent)
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