WORLD WATCH MAGAZINE—JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2005

GMOs POSE SIGNIFICANT THREAT TO WORLD FOOD SUPPLIES

[View Full Magazine: http://www.worldwatch.org/press/prerelease/181.pdf ]

[View Full Article: http://www.worldwatch.org/press/prerelease/181-tresspass.pdf ]

Washington, D.C.— Genetically modified organisms are contaminating natural crops around the world and triggering mounting economic costs as farmers lose markets and organic producers lose their certification, writes Claire Hope Cummings in “Trespass: Genetic Engineering as the Final Conquest.” Worse, consumers are eating GMOs whether they like it or not, and even GMOs not approved for human consumption have shown up in food products such as taco shells. Moreover, writes Cummings, patents awarded for the commercial use of genetic engineering technology are giving agrochemical companies ultimate control over the means and methods of food production.

“Agricultural genetic engineering is dismantling our once deeply held common vision about how we feed ourselves, how we care for the land, water, and seeds that support us, and how we participate in decisions that affect us on the most intimate personal and most essential community level,” she writes.

Valuing corporate interests over long-term societal needs, successive U.S. governments have compromised international food security by giving a number of agrochemical companies a blank check to commercialize genetic technology prematurely, Cummings writes.

Government and research institutions, including many prestigious and once-independent universities in the United States, have sold out to industry agendas. This has unleashed agricultural genetic engineering into the public sphere before science has validated the techniques being used or evaluated the safety of products being developed. Lacking proper knowledge of long-term consequences, Cummings argues, the world now faces an uncertain future with these aggressive, genetically engineered organisms that are built to subvert billions of years of evolutionary safeguards and thereby threaten the biological integrity of the planet.