The GMO Issue: False Claims, Pseudo Analysis, A Politically Motivated Agenda
Critics
of GM promote pseudo-science, make false claims based on ignorance and
are driven by politically motivated ideology. The actions of these
affluent elitists effectively deny food to the hungry. They are
therefore committing crimes against humanity. If you follow the GM
issue, no doubt you’ve heard this kind of simplistic, tired and
predictable diatribe before.
A
good deal of the debate surrounding GMOs involves attacking critics of
the technology who voice genuine concerns and put forward valid
arguments to back up their case. The attacks by the pro-GM lobby are
nonsensical because there is sufficient, credible evidence that
questions the safety, efficacy and the science used to promote GM, as
well as the politics and practices used to get GMOs on the commercial
market.
This evidence has been validated many
times before by peer-reviewed studies and official reports. Furthermore,
many of the slick PR claims made by the pro-GM lobby have been deconstructed and found to be seriously wanting. Such evidence has been referred or linked on many occasions in my numerous previous articles, and I see no need to regurgitate this here.
Attacks
on opponents of GM are designed to whip up emotive, populist sentiment
and denigrate critics with the aim of diverting attention from the
underlying issues pertaining to hunger and poverty, as well as ideology,
commercial interests and political motivations of the pro-GM lobby
itself.
Lobbyist Patrick Moore has called GMWatch “murdering bastards.”
Journalist William Saletan portrays those who question GM as heretics
clinging to faith and relying on an “army of quacks and
pseudo-environmentalists waging a leftist war on science.” Claire
Robinson has taken apart his pro-GM ideology and evangelising here, which is little more than disinformation masquerading as objective journalism.
Former UK environment minister Owen Paterson has described critics of GM as a ‘green blob’ bunch of affluent elitists who are anti-science Luddites. Then there is Fellow of the Royal Society Sir Richard John Roberts, who calls for less politics in science, implying that critics have a political agenda. He says they should stop scaremongering and forwarding propaganda.
Roberts recently said that
if you don’t want to eat GMOs, then don’t – conveniently ignoring that
fact that Monsanto has denied choice by spending at least $100 million
in the US to prevent labelling of GM food. He says that GM is probably
safer than traditional foods, which it clearly isn’t,
and has expressed dismay over the delay in the production of Golden
Rice. Mirroring the propaganda of the GM sector, Roberts says though
Golden Rice became a reality in February 1999 and could have been used
as early as 2002, the opposition to GM has ensured that it is not
currently available, which again is simply not the case.
He claims more than 15 million children
have died or suffered globally due to vitamin A deficiency since 2002.
Roberts asks: “How many must die before we consider this a crime against
humanity that should be prosecuted?” His claims are baseless and his tactic is deliberately inflammatory.
Another prominent scientist-cum-lobbyist, Anthony Trewavas,
uses similar tactics by calling on critics to defer to (pro-GM)
scientists and stop forcing their authoritarian views on people, thus
denying choice and GM to consumers and farmers alike. In a similar
vein, C S Prakash has
used politically-motivated attacks on opponents and made numerous
claims in favour of GM in high-profile media outlets that he does not
appear to want to back up.
If scaremongering and propaganda are
occurring, Roberts, Trewavas, Prakash and others should look a little
closer to home because what they are doing is engaging in a high-profile
roll-out of psychological projection: accusing opponents of the very things the pro-GM lobby is guilty of doing in order to shift the focus of attention.
The bedrock of the industry and its
supporters is driven by politics, commercial gain and ideology. It’s
very foundation is based on a fraud and the capturing and corrupting of international and national bodies, including the WTO, trade deals, governments and regulatory bodies.
And, arguably, it is also driven by fear. ”They are scared to death,” says Marion Nestle,
professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York
University and author of several books on food policy. She adds:
“They have an industry to defend and are attacking in the hope that they’ll neutralize critics… It’s a paranoid industry and has been from the beginning.”
While massive financial clout and the capture of key political institutions (thereby curtailing the option of prioritising more productive and sustainable models of
agriculture) constitute the power base of global agribusiness
corporations, we also must not overlook the role of prominent
individuals, whether scientists or media figures.
These foot soldiers of the GM industry
try to set the GM debate by painting critics as irrational, ignorant and
politically motivated, whereas they (scientists especially) are
supposedly objective and untainted by vested interests (clearly untrue). And they have been quite successful at getting this message into the mainstream media.
Readers are urged to check websites such as Lobbywatch, Powerbase and Spinwatch,
where they will see links between some prominent GM scientist-lobbyists
and big agribusiness companies, the ultra-right group the Competitive
Enterprise Institute, the Scientific Alliance (described
as a front group for corporate interests) and Bivings Group (a public
relations company that worked with Monsanto), among others.
And these connections have resulted in well-orchestrated smear campaigns against individuals and groups (see this, this and this), pro -GM propaganda (see this about the sweet potato) and dirty tricks (for
example, using fake identities to attacks critcs of GM). At the same
time, those responsible for such things carefully manage the message
that they themselves are the persecuted victims of ideologically-driven anti-GM campaigners.
The doublespeak and hypocrisy is plain to see.
If
anything matters to the pro-GM lobby, contrary to the public persona it
tries to convey, it clearly has little to do with ‘choice’, ‘democracy’
or objective science. It has more to do with undermining and debasing
these concepts.
And if it were to genuinely embrace
these values, along with ‘humanitarianism’, a concept it also lays claim
to, it would flag up and protest against the corporate capture of
science and the infiltration by commercial interests of institutions and
regulatory bodies, and it would also protest against the way trade and
aid is used to subjugate regions and the most productive components of global agriculture – the small/peasant farmer - to the needs of powerful commercial entities.
For all of its talk about GM ‘feeding
the world’ and scaremongering about the actions of anti-GM activists
leading to the deaths of “billions”
due to their resistance to GM, the pro-GM lobby sidesteps the true
nature of hunger and poverty. It is only by understanding the issues
raised by Eric Holt-Giménez in
the article from which the following quote comes from that we can begin
to see how ridiculous the claims of Moore, Trewavas, Roberts and the
rest really are:
“The World Bank, the World Trade Organization, the World Food Program, the Millennium Challenge, The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and industrial giants like Yara Fertilizer, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, Syngenta, DuPont, and Monsanto, carefully avoid addressing the root causes of the food crisis. The “solutions” they prescribe are rooted in the same policies and technologies that created the problem in the first place: increased food aid, de-regulated global trade in agricultural commodities, and more technological and genetic fixes. These measures only strengthen the corporate status quo controlling the world’s food. For this reason, thus far, there has been little official leadership in the face of the crisis. Nor has there been any informed public debate about the real reasons the numbers of hungry people are growing, or what we can do about it. The future of our food—and fuel—systems are being decided de facto by unregulated global markets, financial speculators, and global monopolies.”
But
certain people would rather attack those who do actually flag up and
campaign against such things and who desire transparency, democracy and
the proper accountability of institutions that supposedly exist to
protect the public interest. What we get instead is prominent figures
decrying these campaigners as ‘murderers’, ‘elitists’ and regressive
authoritarian ‘types’ and ludicrously comparing their actions with
authoritarian regimes and mass death that occurred under such systems.
Anthony Trewavas:
“Most objectors in this area have a political programme not a scientific one but they like to bend science to their own political point of view. Science is by its nature not politics or political propaganda or anything like it. It deals with evidence not superstition, or political or social philosophies.”
Trewavas conveniently sidesteps the
underlying politics and commercial interests underpinning GM and instead
relies on a heavy dose of propaganda by stating:
“It is an unfortunate situation that in our present world many environmentalist groups have become typically authoritarian in attitude. Greenpeace notably decides its opinions must prevail regardless of others, so it arrogates to itself the right to tear up and destroy things it doesn’t like. That is absolutely typical of people who are unable to convince others by debate and discussion and in the last century such attitudes, amplified obviously, ended up killing people that others did not like. But the same personality type the authoritarian.”
Such a simplistic analysis indicates
that Trewavas is not a psychologist, a historian or a political
scientist. He is a molecular biologist but appears to think his status
qualifies him to have his ill-informed personal views taken as fact and
promoted by the media. And he is not alone.
Kevin Folta, another molecular biologist
(with close links to big agribusiness), argues that adopting GM would
offer “plentiful and affordable food supply using responsible and
sustainable agricultural practices.” Is he also an economist, a
political scientist, a trade policy analyst and an ecologist? No amount
of gene splicing or fine-sounding rhetoric can overcome the structural
factors that lead to poverty and hunger. (Folta has also often spoken on
health-related issues, which again are beyond the field of his
expertise and has got things wrong.)
Structural inequality, oil prices, debt
repayment, trade policy, commodity speculation, land use (eg for
biofuels), the destruction of indigenous food systems, access to land
and credit, soil health, irrigation, etc, all feed into policies that
determine plentiful, affordable food and sustainability. As the backbone
of global food production, especially in the Global South, small
farmers increasingly face marginalisation and oppression due to
corporate seed monopolies, land speculation and takeovers, rigged trade
that favours global agribusiness interests and commodity speculation:
see this on food commodity speculation, this on the global food system and the dynamics that lead to hunger and inequality, this by the Oakland Institute on land grabs and the effects on small farmers and the following link on the impact of international trade rules.
So, what are we to conclude?
That
certain figures within the pro-GM lobby are objective and independent?
That they really do believe in choice and democracy, even when the
evidence is clear that is being been denied consumers and farmers
through, for example, unremitting regulatory fraud, rigged markets, secrecy, manipulation of aid and trade and strings-attached loans? That they know where the line is between science and lobbying, between science and propaganda?
Or,
based on their associations and their silence on crucially important
structural issues that create poverty, hunger and food deficit regions
and their false claims and inflammatory remarks on other issues, are we
to conclude that they are effectively doing the bidding of extremely
powerful commercial interests?
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Colin Todhunter, Global Research, 2015
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