Monthly Online Updates on GE

2008 JUNE

• Children are the major victim for Food crisis
  
  The rising food prices are expected to hit most of the world's 2.2 billion and as result children will be most affected especially those in the developing nations.
  
  Kul Gautam a former executive director of the UN children agency UNICEF said they are likely to be its main victims. 80% of the human brain is formed in the first 18 months of a child's life.
  
  Whether a child will grow to live to his or her full potential it all depends on the food and nutrition that they eat.The damage caused by malnutrition, infection and poor child care in early childhood often lasts for the whole life, and it cannot be easily reversed later," Gautam told IPS.    read ...
  Source: www.ipsnews.net
  
  
• Genetic engineering - a crop of hyperbole
  
  The food crisis is much in the news. It is also on the minds of the biotech industry, which is using rising food worries to suggest, contrary to the evidence, that genetically engineered, or GE, crops are needed to help the world feed itself. The recent spike in food prices is due to increased demand, drought and trade policies rather than to inadequate global production. But world population is growing, so it is worthwhile to consider the role of GE for ensuring adequate, affordable and sustainable food in the future.    read ...
  Source: www.signonsandiego.com
  
  
• GM crops are about making profits, not feeding the world
  
  The environment minister Phil Woolas should look at some facts behind any claims that GM crops will solve the food crisis - caused in part by the GM companies growing biofuels and making huge profits on the back of it ("GM crops needed in Britain, says minister", 19 June).
  
  Modern intensive agriculture, of which GM is a part, does not seek to feed the world - not the poor of the world anyway. It undermines food self-sufficiency, pollutes land and water, causes large-scale soil erosion (depleting the soil of its carbon content and exacerbating climate change). It is the single largest source of nitrous oxide emissions - a powerful greenhouse gas - destroys our biodiversity and increases corporate dependency and indebtedness. It concentrates on a few commodity crops, predominantly for a rich nation's diet, supplanting the diverse indigenous crops of developing countries.    read ...
  Source: www.independent.co.uk
  
  
• Stop corporate control over food!
  
  Farmer and civil society leaders carrying out a peaceful action today in Rome, Italy at the FAO Summit on the Food Crisis were forcefully removed from the premises. At around 1:30pm farmers and representatives of civil society organisations staged an action at the press room to deliver a message that millions of additional people are joining the ranks of the hungry as the corporations that control the global food system are making record profits.
  
  The issues of corporate control and speculation, which are leading causes of recent spikes in food prices, are not being discussed by the government delegations and the international agencies meeting in Rome to debate solutions to the crisis.    read ...
  Source: www.grain.org
  
  
• GM crops: we mustn't rush decisions
  
  Aaargh, PANIC! Quick, force through some new legislation, announce some new initiatives, make it look as if we're doing something, anything! This more or less sums up the government's current position on the food crisis. Think Jim Hacker from Yes Minister with his eyes rolling round and round in their sockets and you've probably got it.
  
  The results, of course, are bad, because decisions taken under stress are so very often rubbish. I give you, for example, biofuels - a quick answer to a complex fuel problem which has caused international catastrophe. Today the Guardian revealed that a government report has concluded that biofuels played a "significant" role in the rise in global fuel prices. Humiliating for the government, and much worse than humiliating for the hungry in India, Bangladesh, Mexico, Haiti, Egypt ... Biofuels, it turns out, was not any kind of answer at all. Cue frantic searches for the correct answer. Frantic, desperate searches.
  
     read ...
  Source: blogs.guardian.co.uk