The European Commission (EC) has delivered a well-deserved slap to the enviro-Nannies at Greenpeace, ruling that there is no scientific evidence that a particular brand of genetically improved soybeans poses any health risk whatsoever. Greenpeace had been crying wolf lately, after Belgian scientists found an unidentified string of DNA in the plant genome; but, as an EC spokesperson told the Reuters news service, “there is no reason to say the product is unsafe for the plant itself or for those who eat it.”
Add this latest false alarm to Greenpeace’s well-worn broken record, says the Center for Global Food Issues (CGFI). “Greenpeace is wrong again,” says CGFI, having previously warned the world “that genetic engineering of crops would cause new and dangerous food allergies (it hasn’t) and that biotech corn would endanger the Monarch butterfly (Monarchs are thriving, and field research says the biotech-protected corn is much safer for Monarchs than the alternative of pesticide sprays).”
Tanzania’s Dr. Michael Mbwille, the Africa editor of the non-profit Food Security Network, is conscious of the damage done by Greenpeace and its food-scare partners; he used even stronger words. “Greenpeace,” Mbwille wrote today, “prints and circulates these lies faster than the Code Red virus infected the world’s computers. If we were to apply Greenpeace’s scientifically illiterate standards for soya universally, there would be nothing left on our tables. That is because no one yet knows with complete precision the genetic makeup of any of the foods we eat; and of precious little else, for that matter. Even the prized organic comestibles that help pay for Greenpeace’s food fear campaign must fall into this category. DNA is DNA, and there is no mystery about it, period.”
Just one week ago, the Organic Consumers Association’s Ronnie Cummins (another food-scare Nanny of the highest order) had this to say to Private Equity Week magazine: “We feel the hey-day of ag-biotech has peaked and it’s going to be a downhill ride for them now, because no new countries are moving to produce genetically engineered crops.” Someone had better show Ronnie Cummins this morning’s New York Times. The Times noted that even New Zealand, long known for its acquiescence to Precautionary-Principle-weilding activists on biotech matters, has decided to move ahead with government trials of genetically improved crops.
