Spring issue 2003
GENETIC ENGINEERING - Attack On The Tree Of Life
available with $10 from PIRM, PO Box 12125, Wellington - subs for 4 issues $50
phone 64 4 9394553.
Contents
EDITORIALS
* Defective genes - shifting the blame - EDWARD GOLDSMITH
PACIFIC NEWS HIGHLIGHTS
THE CASE FOR A GE-FREE WORLD
* Hazards of GM crops & food - RONNIE CUMMINS
*Beware Monsanto's soybeans - MASAHARU KAWATA
* Allergenic Papaya Scandal - JOE CUMMINS
* GE agriculture will not solve world hunger - ActionAid Report
*Some Threats from GM - ROBERT MANN
* Death by DNA Shuffling - MAE WAN HO
PACIFIC & GENETIC ENGINEERING
* Australia at Risk - BOB PHELPS
* NZ govt gives in to U.S. biotech pressure - CHRIS WHEELER
* Horizontal Gene Transfer in the New Zealand environment - STEPHANIE WATSON
FEATURES
* Human genes in other organisms: broken tree of life - PETER WILLS
* Anyone for Gene Therapy in your salad? JOE CUMMINS
WORLD NEWS HIGHLIGHTS
NEW EUGENIC DANGERS
* Genism, racism & the prospect of genetic genocide - GEORGE J. ANNAS
* Will New Zealand be the Liberia of human modification? - DENYS TRUSSELL
GE AND THIRD WORLD
* GE Crops Fail in India - VANDANA SHIVA & AFSAR JAFRI
* Africa, Agriculture & GE Food Aid - TEWOLDE EGZHIABHER
ORGANIC AGRICULTURE
* Sustainable Agriculture, best way to feed the world - LIM LI CHING
* Can Agriculture & Biodiversity Coexist? - CATHERINE BADGLEY
BOOK REVIEWS
* The Myths We Live By by MARY MIDGLEY
* Seeds of Deception - By JEFFREY M. SMITH
* Gene Wars: The Politics of Biotechnology - By KRISTIN DAWKINS
* Tomorrow's Biodiversity - By VANDANA SHIVA
* Biotech Time-Bomb by SCOTT EASTHAM
* War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race - by EDWIN BLACK.
* Living with the Fluid Genome by MAE-WAN HO
* FROM THE GROUND UP - Rethinking Industrial Agriculture - By HELENA NORBERG-HODGE/PETER GOERING/JOHN PAGE
* Made Not Born: The Troubling World of Biotechnology - Edited by CASEY WALKER
Spring issue 2003
GENETIC ENGINEERING - attack on the tree of life
available with $10 from PIRM, PO Box 12125, Wellington - subs for 4 issues
$50 - email pirmeditor@paradise.net.nz
phone 64 4 9394553.
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Open transgenic experimentation IS bioterrorism
A recent development in the U.S. government’s “war on terrorism,” highlights monumental hypocrisy and the farcical state
of international relations. New regulations from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to counter potential
food-borne bioterrorism, include stringent prior notification, along with registration of foreign food facilities, and
inventories from food exporters to the US, etc. “ Securing our food supply against terrorist threats is one of our most important public health priorities, especially at
a time of heightened alert,” says Tommy G. Thompson, US Secretary of Health and Human Services, in a release on the FDA report, “ Ensuring the Safety and Security of the Nation's Food Supply,” (July 2003). The new food regulations will jeopardise the ability of many exporters to operate in the US market and
amount to trade restrictions, running counter to free-market policies the US so forcefully advises the rest of the world
to follow.
While regulating now for food safety, in fear of bioterrorism, for years the US has stridently opposed labelling of
genetically engineered food and segregation of GE seed, against the food safety and security interests of millions of
people worldwide. The US government has blatantly experimented on its own people with a dangerous, revolutionary,
under-regulated, under-researched “new technology” in food, as Ronnie Cummins describes from page 9. It has also
polluted countries with GE seeds, infringing the biosecurity of sovereign countries, causing biosecurity alerts from
countries as divergent as New Zealand, Japan and Africa - see page 7 and articles by Chris Wheeler, and Tewolde
Egzhiabher. This has been very costly for other countries in many ways.
Also, at this very time, the US is challenging the EU in the World Trade Organisation over its food labelling laws for
GE foods and seeks to undermine the Biosafety Protocol now in force which allows countries to reject GE food and seed.
Shamefully, both Australian and New Zealand governments have supported the US in this challenge, against their own
biosafety and biodiversity interests as well as other countries. It is outrageous that the US government, which has in
effect been acting as an agent of bioterroism for the past decade in imposing GE food and agriculture upon the world -
including its own citizens - now talks of “securing the nation’s food supply.”
Infamously, over decades the US has threatened food security for millions of people in third world countries, insisting
they open their markets while keeping its own subsidies and protectionist policies. This was the reason Third World
countries walked out on the Cancun talks in September, see page 39. Millions of people have died of hunger as a result
of the double standards of successive US governments, espousing one law for other countries, and another for itself. On
this level alone, US policies are bioterrorism incarnate for millions.
This issue of Pacific Ecologist documents the ineptness, failings and dangers in the “science,” and the regulatory charade of genetic engineering,
driven as they have been by commercial imperatives. Just look at the article by Masaharu Kawata on the shonky data
governments accepted from Monsanto on GE soybeans. The magnificent efforts of scientists like, Joe Cummins, Mae-Wan Ho,
Vandana Shiva, Arpad Pusztai and many others, have helped fire international revolt against the imposition of GE. New
reports being published in the U.K. as this issue goes to press, referred to on pages 40/41 add to the ever increasing
catalogue of evidence against GE. Let’s hope the Australian and New Zealand governments find the courage soon to say no
to the US and stop further releases of GE crops they are currently set to allow. It would be terrible if New Zealand and
Australia, or any other country became the dumping grounds for the GE crops and food that the US is unable to sell or
plant elsewhere.
– Pacific Ecologist Editor Kay Weir
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Spring issue 2003
GENETIC ENGINEERING - attack on the tree of life
available with $10 from PIRM, PO Box 12125, Wellington - subs for 4 issues $50
phone 64 4 9394553.