Re: the global food supply

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

I finally got around to reading this. With regard to Ken H's comments, it's important to note that George M. is presenting a "slippery slope" argument: the dire results that Ken sees as unrealistic are _predictions_ of what may happen. 

------------------------
Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine




> -----Original Message-----
> From: Eubulides [mailto:paraconsistent@xxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Monday, March 08, 2004 7:48 PM
> To: PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [PEN-L] the global food supply
> 
> 
> Starved of the truth
> 
> Biotech firms are out to corner the market, so they have to 
> persuade us
> something else is at stake
> 
> George Monbiot
> Tuesday March 9, 2004
> The Guardian
> 
> The question is as simple as this: do you want a few corporations to
> monopolise the global food supply? If the answer is yes, you should
> welcome the announcement that the government is expected to make today
> that the commercial planting of a genetically modified (GM) crop in
> Britain can go ahead. If the answer is no, you should regret it. The
> principal promotional effort of the genetic engineering industry is to
> distract us from this question.
> 
> GM technology permits companies to ensure that everything we 
> eat is owned
> by them. They can patent the seeds and the processes that give rise to
> them. They can make sure that crops can't be grown without 
> their patented
> chemicals. They can prevent seeds from reproducing 
> themselves. By buying
> up competing seed companies and closing them down, they can 
> capture the
> food market, the biggest and most diverse market of all.
> 
> No one in her right mind would welcome this, so the corporations must
> persuade us to focus on something else. At first they talked 
> of enhancing
> consumer choice, but when the carrot failed, they switched to 
> the stick.
> Now we are told that unless we support the deployment of GM crops in
> Britain, our science base will collapse. And that, by 
> refusing to eat GM
> products in Europe, we are threatening the developing world with
> starvation. Both arguments are, shall we say, imaginative; 
> but in public
> relations, cogency counts for little. All that matters is 
> that you spin
> the discussion out for long enough to achieve the necessary 
> result. And
> that means recruiting eminent figures to make the case on your behalf.
>