THE MYTH OF GM CO-EXISTENCE WITH CONVENTIONAL AND ORGANIC CROPS
(1,202 words, slightly edited for clarity)
Good morning everyone. Thank you Mr. Chairman for the opportunity to come here today and to hear of experiences around the world.
As Chris has told you, we've been lucky in Wales to have gained such public support in focussing opposition to GM crops, in spite of the Westminster government's favourable response to the voices of the biotech industry.
As an organic farmer and a member of the National Farmers Union in the UK, I'd like to say that that is incidental really, I'm not speaking on their behalf at all. I'm also a member of Farm, which is a relatively new association of farmers and non-farmers established last year in the UK to present an alternative voice of agriculture and its problems to the government, because there was a general feeling in the UK that the conventional farmers associations were not able to do that because 97% of their farmers are not organic. So you can see there is a little bit of conflict even amongst farmers in the UK on the organic versus non-organic issue. But I feel that in addressing GM issues, although the focus of concerns has been expressed by organic farmers, those concerns also relate very much to farmers who wish to be conventional but non-GM as well. And that will be a huge majority, we feel, because those who have expressed interest in growing GM in the UK may be a significant proportion but they are certainly not the majority. The opinion of conventional farmers has not really been canvassed widely in the UK. Obviously the organic farmers' opinion has been canvassed through the organic certification bodies: I'm a member of the Soil Association which has taken a strong lead in opposing any commercial development of GM crops.
I think that in a way GM is a bigger issue for farmers who are not organic but do not wish to embrace GM, because they are not accustomed to ring-fencing their system. At least in the organic movement, over the years we have had to become used to that, and increasingly so, especially from next year when there will be no allowance for non-organic feed inputs in organic production. Up until now there has been; all the members of the European Community have a small allowance for non-organic feed - where organic feed is not available - but that allowance now will have to be removed. So we will have to be totally organic, and in a way that makes it slightly easier for us to say no to GM. But of course as many of you have realised from what has been said so far, the organic movement as a whole is very much of the opinion that there is no such thing as co-existence, having GM here and non-GM there. That might work for a short time but it would not work for very long.
I can illustrate that quite nicely from an experience we heard of in the United States last Summer. A maize grower in Illinois who is organic grew blue maize for one season. He had not grown blue maize before; it is relatively rare and he had a contract to grow it. Everything went well until the Autumn whenhe got two phone calls from neighbours. They wanted to draw his attention to the fact that their ordinary maize had blue kernels in it. This was quite significant because they were worried that it might be rejected when they took it in to sell it. Both of these neighbours were over three miles from him. (The nearest other maize grower was 150 miles away.) This was a well-documented account, and many of us have spoken to the farmer himself. His name is Victor Schronk and he is quite willing to talk about that experience. So that makes a nonsense of any idea of co-existence.
The other experience from the United States and Canada, particulary, is that of the farmer Percy Schmitzer. He is still fighting legal action in the High Court of Canada now. He was a very keen farmer and had over the years bred his own varieties of oil-seed rape (Canola) and saving his own seed. In the period around 1998 - 1999 it became apparent that his crops were becoming heavily contaminated by GM oil-seed rape. To cut a long story short, he was prosecuted by Monsanto and the court found against him. He appealed. The appeal court still found against him, although he had mot deliberately or knowingly sown GM seed, the fact that it was growing on his land was in legal terms sufficient for him to have to pay a fine. He has now appealed again, his appeal was heard in January and is being considered by the High Court in Canada. When the result is announced any time now, this will obviously have implications for the whole industry in Canada. It is now virtually impossible to grow organic oil-seed rape in Canada, because GM oil-seed rape is so widespread - and that's in a large country where the agriculture is fairly spread out!
I'm not going to go on for too long, Mr. Chairman, because if you brains feel like mine does, they must be almost reeling with the amount of horror stories we have heard this morning. The anti-GM movement is sometimes accused of creating hysteria or spreading misinformation, but it's nothing, honestly, compared to the misinformation that is spread by the proponents of the biotech companies! Your attention has already been drawn to this book [Seeds of Deception: Exposing Corporate and Government Lies about the Safety of Genetically Engineered Food; by Jeffrey M. Smith, with a foreword by Michael Meacher; published by Green Books, UK, 2004`: tel + 44 (0)1 803 863 260, email: sales@greenbooks.co.uk.] This is absolutely recommended reading. It's mostly about the history of GM in the United States, quite a lot devoted to BST - bovine somatotrophin - which was really the first GM product, and the way that was approved and marketed in the United States.
I'd like to end with quite a major point. We've heard about the experience in India, and sometimes the opponents of GM have been quite literally accused of killing people in the Third World by denying them access to enhanced nutritional benefits of GM crops. Nothing could be further from the truth! In fact the opposite is the case. Money being poured in to GM research is starving the funding of alternative organic approches. Even in the UK, the majority of agricultural research funding is directed towards GM and biotechnology, and only one or two organic research projects are going forward. So that I think is very serious, it's probably the greatest impact of GM on the organic and non-GM sector. GM has become such a fashionable thing that it has sucked up the available money which is largely coming from commercial sources anyway, and is starving the organic sector of funds. It is encouraging that in spite of that there is growth in the organic sector. And being an organic farmer I have to say that I'm confident to say that this will continue.
With those few words I'd like to wish your movement well in Ireland, and as Chris said, we are just across the water and if we can help at all, we would be delighted to do so. Thank you.
|
