GM FOODS

It was lovely to hear Prince Charles coming out against GM foods, it was an important and powerful statement.

I am not a Royal lover, far from it, but every now and then he comes out with something that makes me wonder about him, plus the fact that he has reputedly upset the masons by not joining.

With the connections he has, he must have full knowledge of the illuminate control, aided by a vehicle of theirs the masons, he must also know that Monsanto is one of the most evil companies on Earth and is a illuminate company, so he must know the full implications of coming out against GM foods and therefore Monsanto.

Therefore his statement is far more interesting and powerful than most people would believe.

I just hope William is listening.

I am extremely sceptical from the start about Monsanto, its connections are odious to say the least, but when Bush starts pushing something on Africa, I know from instinct and the facts that something evil is afoot.

The cost of GM foods is for small farmers completely prohibitive, simply because under the contract when buying GM seed you have to also buy their fertilisers and pesticides, and cant keep your own seeds, even from your own crop, therefore the small farmers even in Britain could not afford GM seeds, let alone the impoverished farmers of Africa.

This is not only a ploy to make the huge masonic landowners richer, by cutting out small farmers, but also a ploy to make Monsanto the prime suppliers ultimately.

This is totally consistent with what the illuminate want all along, taking away any power from the poor and handing it to a few elite in their pocket.

The Gm food scandal follows a very familiar pattern, ignoring any health pleas that it is unsafe, providing only their own falsified evidence and employing lawyers to fight their cause and then giving them a huge financial payback, nearly always an executive position later.

The same thing happened with Blair, Fluoride, Aspartame etc, etc.

In 1994, Smith reports, the Clinton administration created a new position within the FDA for a man named Michael Taylor: deputy commissioner of policy. His charge was to oversee safety concerns around GM food. Before taking that portfolio, Taylor had been a lawyer for Monsanto.

He spent much of the rest of the decade breaking down regulatory hurdles to GM food. For his good work, Monsanto later rewarded him with a lucrative vice president position.

The GM Industry has scotched every effort to require labeling for GM food and it has also managed to squelch evidence that GM foods cause all manner of health troubles.

Jeffrey M. Smith, author of Seeds of Deception, says that several studies from the 1990s showing rats fed on GM food suffered liver damage, reproductive problems, and more.

That evidence was suppressed within the FDA unsurprisingly and suspect industry-funded research was accepted in its place.

Since then, the further studies of the health impacts of GM food has gone unfunded.

Smith also delivers compelling evidence that GM foods do pose significant health risks — evidence that the GM seed industry has managed to suppress.

Smith also reports that polls show that 55 percent of Americans believe that GM foods haven’t entered the food supply. Another 15 percent say they’re not sure.

GM food actually entered the food supply very quickly in 1995, and spread so fast that by 2000 GMO s was appearing in 70 percent of the U.S.A.

These are a couple of honest interesting quotes:

“Phil Angell, the director of corporate communications Monsanto said to the New York Times in 1998 “Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA’s job.”

“to me one of the most incomprehensible things about U.S. policy is that we do not even require the labelling of genetically enhanced foods. But, I think there’s a very good reason why the corporations have fought so hard against this labelling. It isn’t just about consumer choice. Without labelling there’s no real traceability for the health effects of genetically engineered foods. If, you’re a mother, and you’re feeding your baby infant formula and it’s not labelled as genetically engineered soy, for example, and your child has a toxic or allergic reaction, there’s no way you’re going to know that was caused by genetic engineering because it’s not on the label.

President George W. Bush and the top US trade official, Robert Zoellic, both argued last week that African countries could enhance their food security if barriers to GM farm products were removed.

Africa’s agricultural productivity could be dramatically increased through use of "new high-yield bio-crops,"

Kenyan agricultural researchers are reportedly experimenting with GM versions of maize, sweet potatoes, cassava and cotton. And Agriculture Minister Kipruto Kirwa has said that the government would embrace biotechnology to increase food production.

But at a summit of the seven poorest countries held in Nairobi last month, Kenya's position on GM foods was strongly criticised, with delegates from other African countries expressing suspicion that Kenya's position was influenced by the US biotechnology giant, Monsanto, which they said had "an unholy, secretive relationship with leading researchers at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (Kari)."

A leading Zambian biochemist, Dr Mwananyanda Lewanika, said that this suspicion was fuelled by the fact that the Biotechnology Trust Africa was funded by Monsanto and that Kenyan scientists had criticised the Zambian government on the position it took on GM foods during the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg last year.

Kenya's Assistant Environment Minister, Prof Wangari Maathai, however, said that the circumstances under which Kari researchers developed and released some genetically modified crops two years ago were still unexplained.

The Greens lobby in Europe says that the aggressive campaign to have African countries accept GM foods, even though their safety was questionable, was part of a conspiracy to cripple the ability of poor countries to feed themselves.

"This conspiracy has taken the form of the introduction of GM seeds," said Ms Christine Andela, a delegate from Cameroon at the Nairobi summit. "Propagated by gene giants, Monsanto, Syngenta, Dupont and Bayer," she said, "such seeds are fast reducing Africa’s genetic diversity that is crucial to food security and food sovereignty." The Greens recalled the proclamations of US Senator Hubert Humphrey at the height of the controversy surrounding the US' GM food aid to Zambia. Humphrey said: "–to get people to lean on you and be dependent on you in terms of their co-operation with you, it seems to me that food dependence would be terrific."

They hailed Zambians for rejecting GM food aid and for subjecting recommendations made by the World Bank and the IMF to a national debate.

As one person commented,

“GM modifies the plants so that farmers can use MORE pesticide on plants. They can blast the hell out of a field with pesticide.. and the GM plants survive, of course.. it has to be Monsanto's pesticide so the poor farmer has to buy Monsanto roundup ready products and sprays the hell out of them with roundup ready.. and because of GM, the farmer is able to INCREASE the amount of pesticide.

Maybe that's what you want in your food, but it sure isn't what I want in mine.”

UNFIT FOR RATS – FIT FOR HUMANS

Background information on MON863 from Greenpeace. Date: June 2005

MON863 is a genetically modified corn which expresses a Bt-toxin (Cry3Bb1). This toxin, which stems from a micro-organism (Bacillus thuringiensis), is meant to protect the maize against a pest called corn rootworm. This GM maize is different from those Bt-plants (Mon 810, Bt11, Bt 176) already placed on the market, as they produce another toxin (Cry1Ab), which is toxic to the European corn borer. Further, the GM maize contains an antibiotic resistance marker gene, which should be not used according to recent EU law. On 23 April 2004 the French newspaper Le Monde revealed that the French expert body in charge of GMO evaluation (CGB, Commission du Genie Biomoleculaire) had expressed doubts about the safety of GM maize Mon 863.

By filing application for market authorisation under EU law, Monsanto had delivered the results of a rat feeding study to EU government authorities. These results show that significant variations were found between the rats fed with conventional maize and those fed with GM maize Mon863, such as an increased number of white blood cells in the males, reduced immature red blood cells in females, a significant increase in blood sugar in the females or a higher frequency of physical irregularities in the kidneys of the males, such as reduced weight and inflammation.

Victory for transparency a precedent When it filed the application to market MON863, Monsanto requested that crucial documents concerning the risk assessment, like the results of rat feeding trials, should be classified as confidential. But according to European law the public has a right to have full access to information concerning the risk assessment of GMOs. Article 25 of Directive 2001/18/EC states that : "2. The notifier may indicate the information in the notification submitted under this Directive, the disclosure of which might harm his competitive position and which should therefore be treated as confidential. Verifiable justification must be given in such cases.

3. The competent authority shall, after consultation with the notifier, decide which information will be kept confidential and shall inform the notifier of its decisions."

Article 25 (4) also indicates that "in no case" should the information related to "environmental risk assessment" be kept confidential.

Article 2 (8) of Directive 2001/18 defines "environmental risk assessment" as "the evaluation of risks to human health and the environment, whether direct or indirect, immediate or delayed, which the deliberate release or the placing on the market of GMOs may pose and carried out in accordance with Annex II."

In Annex II of Directive 2001/18 the general principles declare that the risk assessment should : "be carried out in a scientifically sound and transparent manner based on available scientific and technical data".

It took more than a year for Greenpeace to see the interests of society finally prevail over Monsanto's economic interests and its policy of opacity and secrecy.

On 5 May 2004, Greenpeace wrote to the German agriculture ministry, which was in charge of the initial risk assessment report, to request access to the full documents concerning Mon 863.

On 4 August 2004, the German agriculture ministry replied that the applicant, Monsanto, had refused to agree to publish the initial rat study MSL-18175, which had been classified as "confidential business information". · On 21 March 2005, the Gerrman authority decided to give access to the full document, because Monsanto could not show that its request for confidentiality was backed by EU or national law.

On 27 April 2005, Monsanto filed an appeal against the decision of German government and, in addition, took out an injunction to stop the authorities publishing the data.

On 9 June 2005, the German court decided to reject Monsanto's request; the data could not be seen as confidential, the right of society to transparency had to be given more weight than Monsanto's economic interests. The company appealed the decision.

On 20 June, the court rejected the appeal, and ruled that the documents be made public.

Serious safety concerns Greenpeace's ongoing examination of the material provided by Monsanto gives rise to serious concerns.

Monsanto's results reveal many irregularities in the study and five significant differences between the rats fed with the GMO maize and the control groups, which were fed conventional maize.

These include statistically significant differences in white blood cells. These cells are an indicator of abnormal situations in the body such as infections and inflammations. Furthermore, there are differences in the organ weight of the kidneys and some abnormal changes in the structure of the kidneys.

Monsanto tries to negate these findings by use of "reference" and "historical" control data collected from other experiments where rats were fed non-GM maize. Such inclusion of "historical" or "reference" data is hardly valid from a scientific point of view. It is the direct comparison between two or more groups during a certain experiment that is the critical and valid comparison in normal scientific practices. As soon as statistically significant differences appear, one should immediately check for further evidence, run further experiments to try to find out where those differences come from. This is particularly important as this feeding trial was only conducted over 90 days. The high number of statistically significant differences therefore raises severe doubts regarding the food and feed safety of this GMO maize.

Since the study indicates that this GM maize has the potential to negatively affect the health of rats, there are grounds for concern that it could also interfere with the metabolism of humans and other animals. This is a valid reason for rejecting the request for market permission.

Furthermore, the experiment was not well designed. Important data and parameters are missing. And, as it took only 90 days, it remains impossible to draw any conclusions regarding the effects of long-term ingestion of the maize.

Greenpeace's position has been confirmed by two new scientific opinions by renowned experts in the field, presented in Berlin on 22 June 2005:

Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini, a member of two GMO evaluation committees within the French ministry of agriculture and ministry of ecology, and Professor Arpad Pusztai, who was invited some months ago by the German government to give an opinion on this GM maize. Both support Greenpeace's position that this maize should not receive market authorisation, given the data known so far.

Conclusion

The high number of statistically significant differences between rats fed MON863 and the control groups in this short feeding trial give sufficient cause for concern to justify rejecting MON863 outright.

This is another familiar scenario of corruption and persuasion.

Deputy Chief of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Plant Industry, TJ Higgins, has written to more than 50 chefs who signed Greenpeace’s GM-free Chefs Charter, asking them not to boycott Genetically Modified products.

Higgins, whose claims about the safety of GM foods have attracted criticism from some scientists and support from others, is CSIRO’s co-inventor of the GM field pea. The pea, spliced with a bean gene, cost more than $2 million to develop but was abandoned because it caused immune issues and lung-damage when fed to mice.

A Greenpeace spokesperson said that Higgins' claims have been refuted by peer-reviewed studies and that "Higgins has clearly, and not for the first time, crossed the line between being a scientist and biotechnology industry lobbyist."

Claims of safety are also challenged by public health scientists who say there is mounting evidence to suggest some GM foods currently on the market are unsafe, and these have not undergone the rigour of testing that found health hazards in Higgins' ill-fated GM pea.

In the case of GM food, a senior scientist who spoke publicly about hazards of GM crops was sacked from the CSIRO organisation.

Dangers

Whatever the dangers are, I believe there is a more serious point.

“Genetic engineers can now mix genes in a variety of different organisms. Some genetic experiments so far have explored mouse genes in potatoes, cow genes in soy and sugar cane, and even human genes in corn, potatoes and rice.”

That is so true, and should be worrying, but so few people realise that the whole DNA manipulation is a much bigger danger than we realise.

Is nobody waking up here!

The illuminate are incredible interested in our DNA, they have a huge library of our DNA and want everybodys.

At the same time they are changing the DNA of the food we eat.

We must remember that the same guys that are pushing this modified food on us are the ones responsible for wanting our DNA, all members of the illuminate who are desperate to take complete control of us because of the huge effect on us of 2012, which I have written about at length elsewhere on this site.

This is really what GM foods is about, which is why they are keen to get it into Africa where the taking of peoples DNA is almost impossible, but if they can control us by the food we est, in the same way they try to control us with the drugs they give us, like fluoride and aspartame, or our new digital TV they are pushing on us, that suits them very well.

More on GM Foods.

“The problem is nobody knows. There is no human safety testing that has ever been done on BT corn or any other GE food, so we the consumers are being used as guinea pigs in this biotech nutritional experiment.”

“Gene pollution occurs much more easily than anybody ever suspected. First it was believed that neighbouring crops would more or less be safe from one another, but now we know that gene will drift for miles. And the rapid communication of gene pollution is inevitable. That’s why the organic farmers are so up in arms today. Their whole industry is threatened because of the encroachment through gene pollution of genetic engineering into their foods.”

Rats fed GM corn due for sale in Britain developed abnormalities in blood and kidneys" By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor, Sunday Independent, 22 May 2005

Cover UP from Europe - Now there's a surprise.

A GM watchdog group based in Wales has today revealed the full extent of a conspiracy by UK and EC officials which has, against the public interest, enabled a highly damaging study on the safety of GM maize to be held on a secret dossier and which has gagged scientists who have seen it.

The study, into the effects of feeding rats for 90 days on Monsanto's MON863 maize, was requested by various EU countries as part of the MON863 assessment process, and was completed in September 2003. The results showed "statistically significant" changes to blood and to certain vital organs in the rats fed on the GM maize, as compared with those in the control group, and immediately alarm bells started to ring in scientific circles throughout Europe. The French authorities tried to cover up the scientific debate about the study (1). In the autumn of 2004 concerns were expressed about the study findings by a number of other national regulatory bodies, including Belgium and Germany. Germany actually commissioned an evaluation of the rat feeding study from Dr Arpad Pusztai, but Monsanto would not allow its 1,139 page research dossier to be examined without the signing of a "declaration of confidentiality." Incredibly, the EC and the German authorities acceded to this demand, which means that their key officials are now bound by a secrecy agreement. This would not be so bad if it were not for the fact that Dr Pusztai's evaluation was highly critical of both the methods and the findings of the study, indicating that MON863 maize by no means has a "clean bill of health." Subsequent leaks (2) from France, Germany and Belgium suggest that the maize variety may indeed be unsafe for animal or human consumption, and that a major cover-up is under way, designed to protected the corporate giant Monsanto and the regulatory authorities who have prematurely advised that MON863 is perfectly safe (3) (9) (10).

The extent of the cover-up is becoming clearer by the day. In France Crii-Gen has been trying for more than 18 months to obtain sight of the full rat feeding study, national opinions and scientific advice on MON863, and other materials held on the dossier by the French authorities and the European Food Safety Authority (4). They have received point-blank refusals to their requests, on the grounds that all of these documents are covered by the "confidential / business interest" rules. However, these rules specify that the only material which may be classified as secret is data on the manufacturing process / genetic characterization of the GM variety; and that all material relating to health and safety issues must be released into the public domain. In the UK, GM Free Cymru has been trying for several months to obtain sight of the rat feeding study, the "opinions" of various EU governments, and other studies and papers relating to the MON863 application; but access has been consistently refused. The only information available to the public on the EFSA and other web sites is information which supports the EFSA / ACRE attitude that MON863 is perfectly safe; all information which might be embarrassing or uncomfortable for Monsanto and the authorities has been given a "CBI" classification (5).

In pursuit of its requests to open up the MON863 secret dossier, GM Free Cymru has written over and again to EFSA, to the President of the Commission, to individual Commissioners, and to the UK government. It has also written to the German authorities and to the EC office which deals with European "freedom of information" matters. These efforts have proved fruitless.

GM Free Cymru, Dr Brian John said: "Our attempts to open up the MON863 secret dossier to public scrutiny show that there is corruption right at the heart of the GM approvals process. EFSA, which is supposed to exist for the protection of the European public, works instead to protect the interests of multinational corporations like Monsanto. This is sinister and dangerous. With the connivance of the EC, it appears even to allow Monsanto to dictate the terms on which it submits research information as part of the approvals process. It is an outrage that any independent scientist should be asked to sign an oath of secrecy in order to examine and evaluate something as important as the 90-day rat feeding study (7).

What is this argument about, there are no benefits, only big dangers.

What are GM crops actually for? They simply exist in order to enable the GM multinationals to increase their market share and to extend their domination of the world market in seeds and agrichemicals. This is what people believe, and no amount of spin will shift consumers from that view. These companies appear not to understand that there are powerful emotional, spiritual and social aspects to farming, and that they cannot reduce agriculture to the lowest common denominators of products, profits and markets

Are GM crops needed?

No. Do they taste better?  No.

Are they cheaper?  No.

Are they better for the environment?  Only if you assume that one agrichemical farming system is slightly better than another agrochemical farming system.

Do they lead to greater yields?  No.

Are the management systems associated with their use easier for farmers? Absolutely not

As far as the consumer is concerned, there are no perceived benefits associated with the use of GM crops, and that is why the consumer sees no need for them (13). Not only are they not needed, but the consumer also sees a whole host of problems associated with the introduction of GM technology. It would be true to say that they feel threatened by it. The USA and Canada have already polluted their prairie farming systems beyond the point of recall, and they have lost markets worldwide as a result. Since they are going down, they are now intent on dragging the rest of the world down with them, through diplomatic blackmail and through the manipulation of the WTO (14). The European Commission and the UK Government appear, to their eternal shame, to be closely involved in this conspiracy.

I have talked about bad science, corrupt scientists, and a GM world in which fantasy becomes reality and in which words mean whatever you want them to mean. Good science, driven by integrity and concern for the common good has been replaced with corporate greed, media manipulation and the vilification of scientists whose views happen to be uncomfortable. This would be good material for a farce if it were not so serious. The science of GM crops and foods is poisoned and corrupt, and is therefore unfit for public consumption. After years of high-pressure salesmanship, the public still feels threatened.

The above are comments made by Brian John in a speech made to the independent Science Panel.

FURTHER INFO.

If you would like to read the rest of his speech, it is here below, and confirms the government and media manipulation that is going on with Monsanto and GM foods, just the same as it has with Fluoride, aspartame and other agricultural poisons and other control mechanisms.

I was asked to make this brief presentation not because I am a scientist working in the GM field, but because I am a scientist who is not. To an extent I am looking in on the GM scientific debate from the outside, and I have to say that I do not like what I see. I want to report to this meeting on what I am picking up from a vast network of NGOs and consumer groups worldwide.

My title is carefully worded. I do not want to ask the question "Are GM crops and foods fit for public consumption?" but "Is the SCIENCE of GM foods and crops fit for public consumption?" My involvement in this issue dates back to 2001 (seems like a century ago!) when Aventis proposed to plant two trial fields with GM maize near Mathry in Pembrokeshire as part of the Government¹s FSE programme. Like many others with a scientific background I was immediately deeply concerned by the secrecy, obfuscation and arrogance which surrounded these two trials (1)(i), and the deeper we dug into the science, the more worried we became. It would require a whole course of lectures to describe the issues which caused us concern, but just a couple of examples:

(a) We were told that the proposed trials were simply to do with the environmental acceptability of GM maize plantings associated with GA herbicide use (1)(ii), but nobody appears to have noticed that the fields proposed were adjacent to the headwaters of the Western Cleddau River, were part of an otter habitat, and that just downstream was an area designated as part of a candidate EU Special Area of Conservation. That did not inspire confidence.

(b) We were told that health and safety issues were off the agenda, having already been sorted out. But when we looked into these issues we found that there was virtually no published material to support this contention (1)(iii), and that something called "substantial equivalence"

was repeatedly quoted by DEFRA, Aventis, ACRE and various other august bodies. On delving further we discovered that this term means whatever you want it to mean, which caused the scientists among us to wonder whether we were looking in on Alice’s Scientific Wonderland.

Now Welsh people may be radical and we may occasionally even be subversive, but we are not stupid, and within a few weeks of the "announcement" (if that is the right word) of the two FSEs the landowners concerned had been virtually ostracised by the rest of the community, and had pulled out of the trials. I have never in my life seen such unanimity in a community on a single issue. The opposition came from a loosely organized coalition of many disparate groups, but it had a common purpose and it spread right across West Wales and further afield. If the crop had gone into the ground, it would not have survived. What did survive was GM Free Cymru, with support today from right across Wales (1)(iv) and a policy line which is not far removed from that of the Welsh Assembly Government.

I want to make several key points about the science of GM.

1. Almost from the outset of our work in the GM field (1)(i), the scientists who belonged to GM Free Cymru noticed that there was a very dangerous "spin" being put on the debate by certain sections of the media, who were presumably being fed "exclusives" and being carefully briefed by the GM industry. The spin was that opposition to GM was based largely upon emotion and even hysteria, and that the pro-GM arguments were based upon science. The ignorant on the one hand, and the informed on the other. We have discovered that the biotechnology industry, DEFRA, the Prime Minister, ACRE, the Royal Society, the FSA and many other powerful individuals and wealthy organizations are signed up to this piece of nonsense. It is nonsense, and the Great British public knows that it is nonsense. Such over-simplifications explain why science and scientists are held in such low esteem by people today; scientists (especially very senior ones) are perceived as arrogant, complacent, and probably corrupt. They insist on repeating the mantra "Trust us -- we are scientists" without apparently doing anything to deserve that trust. I would go so far as to say that many of them deserve the title of "technologist" but not necessarily the title of "scientist".

2. The pro-GM case on health and safety appears to us to be based upon old-fashioned reductionist science which assumes no link between a GM food input and an identifiable pathological condition unless a direct causal relationship can be established. That is all very well, except that none of the scientists in whom we are supposed to place our trust is actually looking for causal relationships; the FDA in the United States has confirmed that it has never undertaken research into the health effects of eating GM foods, and now the FSA has just confirmed to us, after much prodding, that it has no intention of doing such work either (2)(i). When I was a research student, I was very impressed by the contention of Karl Popper that science can only progress through a process of investigation and falsification. In the case of research into GM foods and health, we are not so much talking about the testing of a working hypothesis as total inertia brought about by the reaffirmation and on-going acceptance of a ruling hypothesis. This is irresponsible and very dangerous, since we are talking here about public health and about bodies such as the FSA who are supposed to be working in the public interest (2)(ii).

3. If we contrast the attitude of the pro-GM scientific establishment with the attitudes which are prevalent among the public, we see a vast gulf between them. The public response to our campaign in Mathry, and to our subsequent campaigning, is based upon a much more sophisticated and subtle appreciation of science than that displayed by the proponents of GM crops and foods. The majority of people in the UK, if opinion polls are to be believed, have an antipathy towards the very idea of genetic manipulation of plants and foodstuffs -- not (as the GM spin-doctors would have us believe) because they do not understand the issues or the science, but because they understand them far too well. Over and again we have heard mention of Aids, Gulf War Syndrome, BSE, Foot and Mouth Disease, SARS and the bombardment of the human immune system by alien chemicals, antibiotics and biological constructs which may be unstable and even dangerous (3)(i). People, in our experience, are not interested so much in provable cause and effect relationships in science as in the cocktail of harmful products which their bodies are forced (by the medical profession, by government and by multinational biotech corporations) to absorb, whether they like it or not (3)(ii). Their babies, whether they like it or not, are also forced to absorb these chemicals, some of which are undeniably gender-benders. People are smart enough to know that what we all need is less chemical and biological bombardment, not more; and that GM crops are uniquely unstable and uniquely dangerous for the very reasons which today’s other speakers have enumerated. People also feel that they have been repeatedly let down by science and by scientists.

4. The corporate ownership of GM science is a further cause of grave concern to all of the NGOs who are interested in this issue. We can all understand why the Government cannot indefinitely maintain scientific endeavour across the board through the opening of the public purse; but what we have seen in the case of GM research and development is the domination of the field by technicians and multi-million pound research laboratories funded by Monsanto, Aventis / Bayer, Syngenta / Novartis and other commercial interests. They control the research agenda, they control the means of publication, and they pay compliant technologists to promote their commercial interests. What happens to objectivity in these circumstances? It is hardly worth asking the question; we all know that "inconvenient" research projects simply do not happen, and that "inconvenient" research results do not see the light of day. Even independent institutes and university laboratories and departments have to depend increasingly upon commercial sponsorship, and find themselves constrained and even gagged by the agreements that come with the money (4)(i). Among NGOs there is a widespread perception that the committees which are supposed to control the GM enterprise on behalf of the taxpayer are also dominated by industry placements and academics who are, or have been, funded by the GM multinationals. What are we supposed to think when DEFRA civil servants and Aventis employees travel to community meetings together, or when a Monsanto Director of Corporate Affairs sits at a DEFRA desk dealing with GM enquiries? (4)(ii). We who stand on the outside and look in on this see a field of scientific endeavour which is devalued and disfigured; and it is not surprising that consumer groups and thousands of members of NGOs have become convinced that the whole business of GM science is corrupt from top to bottom.

5. There are absurd accusations from the government and from the GM industry that those who oppose GM technology are somehow harming the UK biotechnology industry and affecting Britain¹s competitiveness abroad. Part of this myth, nurtured carefully by the biotechnology industry itself, is that wonderful shiny new biotechnology investments worth billions of pounds will simply relocate abroad if Britain maintains its hostility towards GM crops and foods. This myth is believed, so we understand, by the Prime Minister himself. Some people are very gullible. It is all poppycock, as we all know (5). Biotechnology is not the same as GM technology, and if the biotechnology industry and certain politicians and journalists have pretended that it is, simply as a means of pushing GM crops down our throats, then they have only themselves to blame for any confusion that there may be in the public mind. If the biotechnology industry was simply to listen to the public and dump its GM obsession, it could, and should, have a bright future with market support and public approval. I simply cannot understand why the biotechnology industry, obsessed as it is with the commercial imperative, seems incapable of acknowledging simple market economics. The advice from GM Free Cymru to the biotechnology industry is this: cut your losses, get out of GM technology, and REALLY listen to the consumer.

6. There is a widespread feeling among NGOs and consumer groups that we have all been betrayed over and again by the Government and its advisory committees on the matter of GM crops.

** We were told at the time of our original investigations into GM science that "terminator technology" was no longer deemed acceptable, and that by agreement within the industry it was being phased out. Now we learn that this technology is being actively developed and extended by Monsanto, and that the OSR used in the FSE programme has also contained GM constructs designed to limit fertility and to discourage seed collection and re-use (6)(i).

** We were told over and again that as a response to concerns expressed by the medical profession, the use of ARMs in GM crops was also being phased out (6) (ii). Now we find that ACRE is recommending consent for AT Ltd to conduct trials with a GM potato containing kanamycin and neomycin resistant marker genes.

** We were told that there would be zero tolerance of unauthorised releases into the environment of GM crops used in the FSE programme. What we have is a catalogue of slapdash procedures, adventitious occurrences of GM varieties, and breaches of the regulations. Almost all of these reported breaches have gone unpunished, on the basis that the amount of harm done was "within acceptable limits".

** We were told that the integrity of organic farming and conventional farming would be protected at all costs (6) (iii). Now we learn that the Government accepts the inevitability of GM pollution of related varieties, and is talking of contamination thresholds well above the detectable level of 0.1% for supposedly unpolluted seeds, foods and products. At the same time it is fighting on behalf of the GM industry against the labelling of meat, cheese, milk, eggs and other products from animals given GM feed. And the Government is pressing the case for "coexistence", which is the Whitehall word for "pollution".

** The latest insult to the intelligence of all of us is the use of the term "holistic agriculture" to describe a mad fantasy world in which organic, conventional and GM farming all happily coexist side by side. This is the ultimate sick joke. One betrayal followed by another, and another, and another.

7. What about the science of the FSE programme? We have all been repeatedly assured that the farm-scale evaluations were being conducted under normal farming management regimes for environmental impact studies. But as the trials got under way it became apparent that there was interference all the way down the line. Farmers were being asked to do things within their management regimes for transgenic crops which they would never do under normal circumstances. The trials appear to have been designed not for the normal maximisation of yield and profit but for the benefit of wildlife (7). There were no studies of horizontal gene flow, or of soil microbiology, or of the unique effects of using specific proprietary insecticides and herbicides with specific GM crops. There were no extensive studies of cross-pollination, pollen drift or adventitious occurrences of GM varieties or GM hybrids. In addition, consent holders and seed owners like Aventis were allowed, within the FSE programme, to vary the densities of seeds planted and to carry out their own "off the record" trials on germination rates, ground coverage and so forth. We are convinced that within the FSE trials, these seed owners have been testing the effectiveness of their own terminator gene constructs. We will reserve final judgement until the full scientific findings of the FSE programme are published, but our view at the moment is that the FSE programme has been cynically manipulated, and that it will tell us nothing useful about what will happen in the British countryside if GM crops are commercialised.

8. Another feature of the GM scene is the replacement of sound science by media manipulation. In recent months the NGOs and some investigative journalists have been appalled to discover the extent to which the GM multinationals, government-funded research institutions, and bodies like the Royal Society and the FSA have been using high-pressure propaganda techniques to promote the take-up of GM crops and food products in this country. In addition, the NFU has in our view betrayed many thousands of its own members by effectively allowing SCIMAC to represent its views on GM crops. The Royal Society is a charity, and is supposed to take an independent and impartial view on GM issues; it protests that that is what it does, but that is not how it appears to many of us who have been keeping an eye on it. In our view it has strayed over the boundary and has been promoting the commercial interests of the GM seed and agrichemical companies at the expense of the public interest. We have asked the Charity Commission to look at its activities. The FSA, through its promotion of GM foods and its interference in the GM public debate, has outraged at least a dozen major NGOs and consumer groups and has lost a vast amount of public confidence as a result. Organizations like Sense about Science, the Scientific Alliance, the Agricultural Biotechnology Council, the International Policy Network and the Science Media Centre are supported and funded to promote GM issues; and there is a complex web of contacts between them and government departments and quangos (8). When one looks at the memberships of these organizations, the same names crop up over and again. The Royal Society, as we have seen in the PR work surrounding the "Brooms Barn / skylarks" study, is tied in to this network and fully signed up to its media manipulation activities.

9. While the media is being used to promote the merits of GM technology, scientists who happen to discover "inconvenient" things, or who happen to write papers of which the GM multinationals disapprove, are being marginalized and vilified by quite senior figures in the UK scientific establishment. Arpad Pusztai and Stanley Ewen know what I am talking about, as do Mae-Wan Ho, David Quist and Ignacio Chapela. Witch hunts are nothing new, but they are always conducted by people who are obsessed with the rightness of their own cause and who are afraid, very afraid, that their beliefs, their academic reputations and their commercial interests might suffer should some other view prevail (9). So in the famous case of the Mexican maize landraces, Monsanto hired a shadowy media company to invent biotechnologists, who then encouraged a massive campaign to bombard the Editor of "Nature" magazine with manufactured protests following the peer-reviewed publication of the Quist/Chapela paper (9)(i). The peer-reviewed paper by Ewen and Pusztai which was published in "The Lancet" led to the vilification of those two gentlemen, in which campaign senior fellows of the Royal Society were heavily involved. In order to justify its dismissal of that paper on the physiological effects of GM potato consumption, the Royal Society fraudulently cited a review paper – an opinion piece by Gasson and Burke which contained no new science. We have picked up from other scientists that projects which might lead to inconvenient findings on GM issues are difficult to fund; and that independent scientists feel intimidated and pressured to "toe the biotechnology line". This situation is an absolute disgrace, and reminds us that since the burning of witches in the sixteenth century and since the scientific purges of the Stalinist era in the USSR, not very much has changed.

(9)(ii). Truth and scientific integrity are the losers, and all of us in the UK scientific community should be thoroughly ashamed that we have allowed this quagmire of hostility and intolerance to develop.

10 Back to substantial equivalence. So far as we can discover, this was originally a marketing or commercial concept, designed to convince a sceptical market that GM crops are essentially the same as non-GM crops. Consumers and investors were both being wooed. Then somebody realised that the concept was handy for politicians, who have a limited understanding of a great many things and who like matters to be simplified. Then somehow or other it became a scientific term as well, although it is essentially meaningless (10)(i). Very conveniently, it was used by the GM industry and by the Government to explain away the lack of testing for GM health and safety effects; such tests were really not needed, it said, because GM crops and foods are substantially equivalent to the crops and foods we have been eating for years (10)(ii). This was a wonderland in which Alice and the Mad Hatter would have felt very much at home. Then it got even madder, because when it suited them (e.g. for the commercialisation of GM varieties in Europe) the GM multinationals said that their varieties were "distinctive" enough (i.e. peculiar or unique enough) to pass the DUS test and to be added to the seed lists while at the same time being substantially the same as the varieties that were on the list already. If anybody wants evidence of the insanity of the world of GM crops, look no further.

11 Finally, a word about the precautionary principle to which we all -- in theory -- subscribe. It is enshrined in legislation in European Directive 2001/18/EC and in the EPA, and it was used by the Scottish Parliament¹s Health Committee in its investigations into the health effects of GM crops and foods. The BMA has followed the same line -- namely that when somebody wants to introduce something unnecessary (like GM food) into the British diet, it should be assumed to be harmful unless its proponents can prove otherwise. Its proponents have not attempted to prove otherwise, other than by reference to the "substantial equivalence" nonsense. There have been no properly-conducted controlled clinical trials, and in spite of the alarm bells that started ringing following the publication of the "Newcastle feeding study" (based on one small meal of GM soya) neither the FSA nor the Government has shown any interest in looking at the effects of the short- or long-term ingestion of GM foods by the healthy population, let alone by those with vulnerable immune systems including babies, the elderly and infirm (11)(i). In my book this is criminally irresponsible, since we are owed a duty of care and since the evasion of this research might well result in substantial harm to large numbers of people. And what else is going on while the Government and the FSA are covering their eyes and their ears? Westminster puts huge pressure on the Scottish Parliament to reject the Health Committee Report. The BMA is also put under pressure to abandon its precautionary stance on GM foods. And the GM industry frequently challenges those of us with no laboratories and no resources to "go out and find evidence of harm from GM foods" if we can (11)(ii). DEFRA and the Ministry of Health connive in this, and simply assume that GM foods are safe unless their opponents can prove otherwise. This is a betrayal of the precautionary principle, and yet another indication of the extent to which commercial or profit interests have overtaken the public health interest at the heart of Government thinking.

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