Michael O'Callaghan (Global Vision Consulting Ltd)
Welcome again everybody. What would you like to talk about now?
Brendan Duffy (Irish Organic Herbs Ltd)
Is there anyone here who feels that, in principle, we should not be doing any research on GM?
Woman in green jacket
Yes.
What are the arguments against any research on GM, using the Precautionary Principle?
Woman in green jacket
Well if we only target the food sector, we can be accused of a NIMBY [not-in-my-back-yard] position. But if we really want to be GM-free, we should really also be targeting all those companies which are providing livelihoods for people through the research they do on these genetic modifications which will eventually or are already being put into place in other parts of the world. And they are a fundamental part of the Irish economic trajectory for growth, and it's going to be extremely difficult to target them. I don't see how you can leave them out without being accused of being simply concerned with your own health as an Irish consumer.
Adrian Bebb (Friends of the Earth Europe)
I think you have to be very careful on the jobs argument, which is what the governments push and the biotech industry pushes. If you look at the facts, I don't know the facts for Ireland, but usually there are very very few jobs involved in GM food, all the jobs are in the pharmaceutical and the medical side of GM, that's where the jobs are, there are very few in food.
Woman in green jacket
There are a lot here because this has been an agricultural based economy. We've got both the pharmaceutical jobs and the jobs in agriculture.
Adrian Bebb
Yes, but generally I've seen in the past that there are very few jobs there, so I don't think their arguments stand up, I don't agree.
Richard Auler
I do agree.
Woman in blue jacket
Even if they don't stand up, people can make them stand up. There are two ways of thinking. We don't know what the future is, but that's not necessarily a valid argument for some people.
Michael O'Callaghan
My reservation about GM technology is that, as everybody says, the more you know, the less you like it. And one of the things that I've learned in the last few months is that there is an inherent problem with the stability of the modified plants. They tend not to be stable. There are all kinds of details that one could go into in that respect, but the gist of it is that you end up with things that are completely unpredictable and uncontrollable in the long term. [For details, see the Independent Science Panel report "The case for a GM free worldî which you can download here.] All it takes is one little bit of pollen or one little bit of DNA to escape and you can have a huge mess on your hands. So I would think there is much greater promise in alternative and other areas of medical research rather than tinkering with plants and hoping they will produce the right drugs that can be harvested.
Richard Auler (Irish Organic Farmers and Growers Association)
I would like to get some guidance from you. I am going next week to a meeting where there is discussion, frankly or not so frankly, about the co-existence of GM crops, organic, and conventional crops. Now I want to know is this possible in Ireland or is it not possible? And if it is possible, under what conditions? Here our friend might be able to help me a little bit.
Adrian Bebb
Many governments around Europe at the moment are developing co-existence regimesÖ
Richard Auler
Öwith all these draft guidelines, which are ridiculous.
Adrian Bebb
Yes, absolutely. Rubbish! It's quite easy to say that for some crops like oil-seed rape then co-existence is completely impossible. For other crops like maize it's not totally impossible but it gets more and more difficult. And I think at the end of the day there is always room for human error as well. So you could say OK, potatoes are not going to cross-pollinate with the neighbouring field, but what happens if they end up in the food chain if they actually have vaccines in them? This is what we've seen in America, so how do you cope with those human-error type of co-existence problems as well? We certainly know about some of the crops they are planning for Ireland. Beet: pollen travels for miles. Oil-seed rape, pollen travels for miles. Maize, not miles but certainly quite a distance. So for those crops, co-existence is very difficult.
Michael O'Callaghan
And also there aren't any liability provisions in place, to deal with the contamination
Adrian Bebb
Exactly, which goes with it.
Michael O'Callaghan
And there's no insurance.
Bridget Carlin (Irish Seed Savers Association)
And what about cross pollinating with wild varieties, and the effect that that could have on the insect and bird populations?
Michael O'Callaghan
And also what they call horizontal gene transfer, where bacteria and viruses gobble up pieces of modified DNA as they travel through the ecosystem and bring it into other totally unrelated plants. The whole thing is uncontrollable and completely insane!
Bridget Carlin
And they not only gobble it up, they change it! Because every organism it goes into has proteins that modify the genes.
Michael O'Callaghan
And by the way, the man from Monsanto [i.e. Monsanto Ireland CEO Dr. Patrick O'Reilly] popped into the room for five minutes and left. I started saying something about not demonizing these guys, you know, I actually wanted to talk to him but he disappeared before I had a chance. He spoke in Dublin a couple of weeks ago at the "Ethics of Eatingî conference sponsored by the Royal Irish Academy [www.ria.ie] and the Irish Council on Bioethics [www.bioethics.ie]. And one of the things he said there was it's true that co-existence between GM and conventional crops isn't possible, we admit that, and organic farmers will be contaminated but it doesn't matter, because in Ireland organic farmers are tiny and so they are going to be sacrificed. He said that publicly!
Bridget Carlin
Michael just when you mentioned the Bioethics Council, did you ever get the results from that survey they did at the end of last year, which hardly anybody replied to because it was never advertised?
Michael O'Callaghan
No.
Bridget Carlin
And then I think they got results they didn't want, they were to be available before a certain date. And they extended the closing date because they hadn't got the answer they wanted.
Richard Auler
I am aware that he (Adrian) has to go. Another question: do you agree that worldwide markets are emerging looking for GM-free produce?
Adrian Bebb
Yes, they are huge, huge! The European market is the biggestÖ
Richard Auler
I think that is the thing we should sell to Irish farmers: we have the green and clean image, we have our own island, we have such an unique position to fill these markets - for premium prices!
Brendan Duffy
There is already some organic grain being sent out to Canada from Ireland, from the North-West organic growers.
Michael O'Callaghan
Is it rape-seed?
Brendan Duffy
I presume its either barley or oats.
Michael O'Callaghan
Because of the difficulty of getting the GM-free variety in Canada. Do you know who the guy is?
Brendan Duffy
Dennis Hawthorne.
Michael O'Callaghan
It would be very interesting to focus some attention on them.
Richard Auler
I'm only aware of the import of organic grain to Ireland, because we have absolutely not enough organic grain here.
Michael O'Callaghan
But he says they are exporting organic grain to Canada.
Adrian Bebb
This is the position the Welsh Assembly has taken. In a global market, how can they market their produce from Wales? And they want to do as coming from a green landscape, a green countryside. And it's going to be non-GM. So food producers are going to go to Wales and not to Ireland to buy their produce in the future if Ireland isn't GM-free.
Richard Auler
I'm looking for a way to sell this message to farmers. Farmers normally react to money, you know, very little else. What the future holds for the next generations, some of them don't care. But if they know there are markets and there is a uncertainty here, let's go for this.
Adrian Bebb
From next weekend, Europe is going to be the largest food market in the world, and that's virtually all GM-free.
Michael O'Callaghan
And what about the accession countries? I mean like Romania and Bulgaria.
Adrian Bebb
Problems!
Michael O'Callaghan
They've got serious problems down there with contamination through the back door.
Adrian Bebb
Yes. We've got to wait and see. They've now got to adopt the new EU legislation.
Michael O'Callaghan
Is Romania joining?
Adrian Bebb
No, Romania is the next round. But for instance Poland's got a problem. But last week all the NGOs came together in Poland and launched a new campaign there, so I think we have to wait and see what is going on.
Woman in green jacket
There's a very big interest in Poland in supplying the German organic market, so they could easily go the right way.
Adrian Bebb
Exactly.
Michael O'Callaghan
There's also a lot of GM contamination in Poland.
Woman in green jacket
Yes, because they haven't had very good regulatory systems.
Michael Lemass
Could I just come back to Richard's point about what you can earn from GM stuff and the flip side of that. You might be able to elaborate on it, Adrian: has anyone done a cost analysis of how much it costs the farmer? Because given the story from India it sounds like a bloody disaster.
Adrian Bebb
The best example to use is Britain. The British government last year had this big national debate, and one part of the debate was looking at social economics. And this was Tony Blair's No. 10 Policy Unit which did research ‚ published on their web site - into social economics and what would happen to UK Plc. if it grew GM crops. And it came out negative, saying it would be bad for the economy, bad for farmers, and will be for the foreseeable future until the consumer wants it.
Michael O'Callaghan
So we need somebody to do that for Ireland. Kaethe, would you have the expertise to do it?
Kaethe Burke-O'Dea (Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability)
Ha!
Adrian Bebb
Anyway, I've got to go. Good luck!
Michael O'Callaghan
All right. Listen, thank you so much for coming.
Adrian Bebb
No, no, it's a pleasure, it's a pleasure. And I look forward to seeing GM-free Ireland.
Michael O'Callaghan
And tell them in the other countries that we're working on it! We're catching up slowly.
Adrian Bebb
Absolutely!
(Adrian leaves to applause)
Woman in yellow jacket.
I thought one man said earlier that Monsanto has gone out of Ireland. That was confusing.
Woman in green jacket
They're not doing any trial crops any longer, but they're not gone.
Michael O'Callaghan
No, the company is still here.
Richard Auler
They still have a representative here.
Woman in green jacket
But there are lots of other companies here to look at, they are not the only one.
Woman in yellow jacket
And these other companies, are they doing trials?
Woman in green jacket
No.
Richard Auler
At the moment there are no trials being done.
Woman in yellow jacket
And is that because we rejected them, because of some influence?
Richard Auler
Teagasc in Oak Park is just waiting to do something. They are very much in favour, unfortunately. We will not have an ally in Teagasc, that's for sure!
Grainne (woman in striped top)
The trials ended because of the results of Genetic Concern's campaign [-Ed.] and the awareness at that time. There were three, five land trials and they were allowed to complete, but supposedly the plants never went to flower, never went to seed, they were destroyed before then.
Michael Lemass
One of them got uprooted, in Carlow.
Grainne (woman in striped top)
That's right.
Michael O'Callaghan
Apropos of Genetic Concern, we invited Quentin Gargan to come [ - Ed.] and he wished us the best of luck. But he said to get her from Bantry takes longer than to get here from Paris and he couldn't come.
I just wanted to ask Kaethe (Kaethe works for Feasta and is involved in food research): what would your advice be on the best way to get an economic analysis on the negative impact that GM could have on Ireland's economy?
Kaethe Burke-O'Dea
Well there is certainly a good think tank available in Feasta to maybe do that. We are also an international organization so we would have a lot of contacts in other countries
Grainne (woman in striped top)
What is Feasta?
Kaethe Burke-O'Dea
Feasta ‚ I don't know if you are all familiar with it - it's the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability. I'm on their board. Now I'm not a food person per se, but I am going to be doing this food event in the fall, I'm a product development person. They do have a very strong international network of alternative economic people who could probably help Ireland to put together a study, if necessary. It would be worth running it by them to see if they are interested. I'm not an economist, I'm sort of the fly in the ointment on the board.
Richard Auler
Wouldn't that be a lovely topic for a PhD?
Kaethe Burke-O'Dea
It would be. You might actually find someone at UCD. Because I don't know whether you are all familiar with the new book that John Phehan wrote on Irish farming, which has just come out, which is an absolutely brilliant book if any of you are interested.
Richard Auler
It's going in the organic direction, the right direction!
Kaethe Burke-O'Dea
Yes, and he's making the link between fossil fuel depletion and where we are going to go with industrial agriculture. I'm hoping to speak to him in the next while ‚ I'm reding the book at the moment - and getting him involved in this event I'm doing. I think he might beÖ
Cecilia Armelin (Dietician)
Is in in Trinity?
Kaethe Burke-O'Dea
He's in UCD.
Woman in green top
Paul Downing is in the wrong discipline, I think. Isn't he a chemist?
Cecilia Armelin
Yeah, but he's very much into organic farming. That's how I met him.
Kaethe Burke-O'Dea
Phehan is the head of rural resource management at UCD. He would be very much pro all this. He certainly would have students working under him, and would have the connections to get something interesting going.
Michael O'Callaghan
How long would it take to put together the basic argument? I mean it wouldn't have to be in great detail.
Richard Auler
If it's not in great detail it doesn't showÖ
Kaethe Burke-O'Dea
You want it to be done
Young woman in green top
A lot of people are sick and tired of proposals and guidelines and papers being issued.
Michael O'Callaghan
Another factoid that would be interesting to have would be a sense of the burden of extra bureaucratic red tape that farmers would have to deal with labeling and traceability and insurance and all these things. It would be great if we could come up with an estimated figure that it would take an extra ten hours a week to deal with red tape if we allow GM crops into the country.
Richard Auler
I am going to sue them on the liability issue.
Kaethe Burke-O'Dea
But so far nobody has paid for any of this.
Richard Auler
If my farm is contaminated, who is going to pay me compensation?
Michael Lemass
Monsanto is going to sue you and you're going to pay them!
Richard Auler
I want to make this uncertainty case for the farmers, to pull them over to voluntarily say no to GM crops. That makes sense for them.
Woman in white jacket
This morning we were told we were awaiting the outcome of that legal case in Canada which is bein appealed to the High Court. It's nearly there so it would be very useful if we can get that information [She is referring to the million dollar patent infringement lawsuit brought by Monsanto against Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser following the contamination of his fields by Monsanto's GM oilseed rape. For details see the Schmeiser interview with Edward Goldsmith in the May 2004 issue of The Ecologist magazine - www.theecologist.org - Ed.]
Richard Auler
But the German government has got the right direction. They don't allow any GM to be grown until this legal minefield is fully, totally, 100% watertight solved, full stop.
Michael Lemass
They've got Greens in the Government!
Bridget Carlin
But the biotech companies have flatly refused to take any responsibility.
Richard Auler
No insurance company is insuring the other side. World-wide, they all refuse!
Woman in white jacket
So you have several points for your meetings: the economic argument, the legal argument, the liability argument,
Brid Banville (Euro-Toques Ireland)
We sent an email to our insurance brokers asking them what the situation was and they sent back an email. They obviously rang Hibernian and FBD who seem to be the people who insure farmers; they basically said that they are not insuring anybody in Ireland at the moment so they are not 100% sure what they would do, but that the chances are they would not get public liability for damage to crops, and that even if they did, the duty of disclosure would be the main point, that you would have to disclose if you were sowing GM crops. And the chances are no-one would insure you if you disclose that you are doing GM crops. So then if there was damage they are not going to pay you compensation. And naturally Monsanto and the other companies are not going to ensure you either. I can give you a copy of that if you want.
Joe Glynn (EarthWatch)
It is a sensitive issue with the GM companies. Monsanto was challenged at the GM conference a few years ago in the Point Depot, about insurance and externalizing the risk, which is actually what they are doing.
Biotechnology wouldn't be viable unless they were externalizing all the risk: getting governments and society to bear the burden of risk if something goes wrong. Without that they literally would not be viable. They pointedly refused to even address the question, which is a clear indication that they are sensitive about it. I sincerely believe this externalization of the risk is one of the key components of the economic argument against them ‚ this externalization of risks, getting society to bear the burden of risk.
I think there is a definite need for a brainstorming session on the economic impacts of it, the economic risks for Ireland, because not only have we got this risk of GM crop contamination, our food supply being threatened, our image being destroyed for tourism, the image of our produce, but we also have a huge stake now with the government having put a billion euro of taxpayer's money into biotech.
Monsanto, as I understand it, is part of Wyeth. And Wyeth has one of the biggest foreign direct investment projects in the country at the moment, out in West Dublin. They are investing a huge amount in a biopharmaceutical plant where they use genetically engineered microbes which are programmed to do nothing but produce drugs which are passed by the regulators quite conveniently ‚ they are easily approved by the regulators. And this gives Wyeth a chance to get easily approved drugs that apparently nobody can mimic unless they use the same type of biotech process. They use huge vats, I gather, to cultivate these drug cultures. What they do with the remainder we don't know, there's been no discussion.
I think the government is taking a huge economic risk here with a technology, putting so much of our R&D budget into it: a billion euro into Science Foundation Ireland with no public debate. They are coercing Leaving Cert students into science. You might have seen the dossier that Noel Dempsey [Minister for Education] revealed during the weekend. It's a confidential dossier that was circulated to Fianna Fail candidates under the name of the Department of Education and Science. The whole Department has been re-named! So instead of just educating people, we now want to educate them and teach them science. So we're taking a huge risk on the biotech sector. And the biotech bubble already burst around 2000, the time the IT bubble collapsed. And more than likely, this bubble will burst again, given that consumers don't want this stuff and that the risks are so huge. So I suppose I'm just trying to say that in addition to the risks of GM crops, the risks of field tests, the risks of contaminating the food supply, the risks of contaminating our agricultural crops, there is also the risk of a major economic setback for the country as a result of having put - without any public debate ‚ a huge portion of our resources into funding the biotech bubble.
Young woman in green top
Yes, I just wanted to bring it into some kind of proposals and plans to form a cohesive movement and pull people together. I don't know if anyone was at the Natural Step Conference on Friday. [Note: the Natural Step is a learning, motivating, and strategic planning tool applicable to businesses of akk types and scales, which re-orients the organisation toward a truly sustainable fututre. The masterclass conference to which the woman refers was entitled "New Directions for Businessî and was led by Natural Step UK CEO Mark Cahill as part of the Convergence Festival 2004. For more info visit www.naturalstep.org] I wont' go into it here, but what I took from it was that public support and consumer support are fundamental, and the media is crucial to spreading the word and the right kind of information being put out there. Whatever way it goes, setting up a charity [i.e. to co-ordinate the GM-free Ireland campaign] has to be linked in very closely with informing the public and maybe getting some big media personalities on board, so that people will listen to them. Economists like David McWilliams, that kind of angle.
Michael O'Callaghan
As I envision it, such a charity would have a number of purposes. One would be public information, public awareness. The other would be specifically targeted briefings and workshops for stakeholders like government agencies, farmers, the food industry, consumers, religious groups, insurance companies, and scientists. Also briefings for prospective local GM-free areas - like all the County councilors and the people who run National Parks - to inform them that they actually have an option under EU law to be GM-free if they want to be. And also lobbying and media relations. So there would be five or six different areas, and I reckon it would probably take a couple of years to make the country be GM-free, permanently. So you'd have to raise money to employ five or six people on a full-time basis for a couple of years.
Young woman in green top
Obviously there is some kind of clock ticking, but is there a deadline coming up anytime soon where there would be a point of no return?
Michael O'Callaghan
It almost seems every month there is another deadline of some sort coming up. So it's a paradox: the threat gets bigger and bigger, but also the resistance is getting bigger and bigger at the same time. So they legalized the first GM food [Chardon LL maize] in Britain couple of weeks back, but then there were so many conditions attached that the company that produced it [Bayer Cropscience] said they would not even bother.
Woman in blue jacket
The UK Science Minister is Lord Sainsbury, who owns Sainsbury's supermarket, soÖ we've got problems.
Woman in green jacket
There's a couple of events coming up very soon which I wonder could be targeted. Apparently because of some complex of external reasons which have nothing to do with their own motivation, the Irish Presidency of the EU has got very attached to the promotion of biodiversity and the whole focus on 2010 as the year when we should have stopped the depletion of biodiversity. And in some ways the Presidency seems to have got its name linked to the Biodiversity issue. And there's a big meeting coming up in Killarney in May ‚ focusing on the European platform for biodiversity. I think it's the 20th to the 23rd or 24th.
Michael O'Callaghan
That's very important.
Woman in green jacket
It amazes me that people aren't bringing biotechnology and diversity together a lot more than they are, and it might be an opportunity to make some connections there.
Michael O'Callaghan
Unfortunately I have to be at another conference somewhere else that weekend. But I thin there is a real argument to be made on this. Do you know the International Union for the Conservation of Nature ‚ IUCN - which publishes the Red Book of endangered species and manages the wildlife parks and stuff globally. It's the top NGO on the environmental side, on the planet and they have a lot of expertise in biodiversity. I put it to them that European biodiversity is threatened by GM crops, and wouldn't it be great if there was a Biosafety Reserve somewhere in Europe, and that Ireland would be the best place for it because of it being up-wind. And they are willing to come and talk to the government on that subject. They are kind of the keepers of the biodiversity on the planet, so legally they are the people are really most responsible for it.
Woman in green jacket
Would they come before the Presidency ends, do you think?
Michael O'Callaghan
Well there are two parts of IUCN that would be interested. Their Chief Scientific Officer said he would be willing to come, and he has written on biodiversity and so on. He's not quite as green as I would like him to be: he said there are some cases where GM crops might increase biodiversity. But the other side of IUCN is their National Wildlife Parks, you know, they had a big conference in Johannesburg a few months back. I think we could make a very strong case for Ireland to be a Biosafety Reserve for the food security of other EU contries and use the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to make Ireland legally off-limits to GM crops.
Richard Auler
What about voluntary local GM-free zones?
Michael O'Callaghan
Yes it can be done. But all it takes is for one farmer to contaminate and then the whole thing collapses.
I think this is a real opportunity. I would really love to explore the possibility of getting other governments in the European Union, and other organizations and NGOs and Greenpeace etc. to make the case that Ireland should go for the Biosafety Protocol. Nobody else has used it so far, they would love to see somebody start to do it. And I think, because of the biodiversity issues, and Ireland's strategic position, it would be a win-win for them and a lot of countries would benefit if we did it.
Richard Auler
We are a very special case.
Michael O'Callaghan
Yes and we could make the argument that we are the ideal place.
Cecilia Armelin
Let me remind you about what he said though about the link between Monsanto and the Wyeth laboratory. Wyeth produce Wysoy which is a major vitamin-fortified infant feed that I used to have to depend on sometimes for allergies when I was working at Children's Hospital on Harcourt Street. There was only Wysoy or a Cow & Gate product of soya feeds that were vitamin fortified to feed babies. But this Wysoy has got to me made from 100 percent GM soya. And that's going into babies from the perhaps one to two weeks of age when they're diagnosed that they need this. We always had, as pediatric dieticians, a reservation about it. This is going back 20 years. We said we're not too sure that it is going to be totally safe. We always knew that, before it was even noted. And the other dieticians that were more orthodox than me even, had reservations about Wysoy. They said "we'd rather you just cope with the cow's milk until three months of age because we are not quite sureî. We'd say to the mothers "cope with the eczema or the colic or the diarrhoea or whatever until three months at least or ideally six monthsî. And we definitely said "don't stay on the Wysoy for over nine months or a yearî. And that still goes because of our ignorance of Wysoy 20 years ago, and now there should be total knowledge that it's just not safe, and yet now Monsanto is joining in with them. And only last week, in the paper there was an article about some kind of metal found in a certain batch number of Wysoy products. And it got in to Ireland and we ought to send it back. But they said "don't worry there's no danger, the metal will be digested in the babies' intestinesî. I mean, what a cop-out, you know? So it's not a good food. Infants are now receiving baby food which contains genetically modified soya. We need to use soya milk for many children with eczema; they do cope better on the soya for whatever reason. There are reservations about it but yet they need it soÖ
Michael O'Callaghan
Is this only a medicinally prescribed baby food? It's not sold in supermarkets?
Cecilia Armelin
It costs much more so it's usually recommended by a doctor or a dietician. Most people will go into a pharmacy and just get it off the shelf. It doesn't have to be prescribed. It's Wysoy and Formula S. I think the Formula S is Cow & Gate, although they may have changed the name. You will see them in the pharmacy near an area where the drugs are. But you don't need a prescription for them. So a mother may think Oh, my child has eczema and goat's milk is not suitable at three or four months of age because it's very high in protein. But if she knew that this had GM soya in itÖ
Young woman in green top
This is why I was asking about traceability this morning, and how we would know what's in various products. Are you saying most of the milk replacement products that are based on soya would have GM in it?
Cecilia Armelin
The natural soya products are there, but the infant soya milk is a powdered formula that you mix with water. It's made by an American or UK company.
Woman in green jacket
I think the only way you can avoid it is to find an organic infant food-substitute, but all the others are genetically modified.
Michael Lemass
Could I just ask something on that question. Have any studies been done on the health effects of eating GM?
Cecilia Armelin
Some of the health effects are not going to be there till generations down the line. Like right now we have in Ireland a higher instance of cystic fibrosis. There is a suspicion that that's because of an immigration of certain populations from Norway. It's the same with Ceoliac conditions. Coelica is wheat free. There is a higher occurance in this part of Europe. Who's to say it wasn't some genetic distortion that happened in this area through generations?
Richard Auler
It's impossible to prove! Even if someone spent 20 years, there are so many factors involved, and you can never ever say it goes down to GM food and not to pesticides, you know?
Cecilia Armelin
And all of us will be dead, really, when it's been figured out.
Richard Auler
But we'll last longer maybe; we'll be full of preservatives!
Woman in green jacket
In some ways I think to focus the whole argument on the safety of the food in a narrow way is not a very strong case. Because we'd say oh maybe there will be effects in the future and they will say maybe there won't. But there's a much broader argument about the safety of the biosphere.
Richard Auler
But there's a good argument in that fear. Because if we don't know, we should leave it out.
Woman in green jacket
Well we might think so but a lot of people will argue that way.
Richard Auler
Well there is this Precautionary Principle.
Woman in green jacket
But not everyone is so averse to risk.
Cecilia Armelin
Scientifically you might say, Weston A. Price and McGarrison, they are two famous doctors going back to the 1940 ‚ 1960s. And Weston A. Price has chronologically noted that through seven generations if you feed cats white bread, the deficiency symptoms will not be noticed in that generation of cats but in seven generations down the line. They actually have photographs that I show to people when I teach them, of people ‚ kids ‚ that are in Africa and their teeth formation from 50 years ago down to now. And in Africa you have a lot children born with bad teeth, and chronologically this goes along with feeding Africa a lot of white bread and changing their diet.
Woman in green jacket
You can have chronological change. But Europeans were terrified of the tomato when it was first imported in the 16th and 17th centuries and predicted all sorts of desperate things would happen. It turned out to be okay. So sometimes things are significant, sometimes they're not. I just think it's not the best argument to pursue. It's better to go for the broad argument about the disaster that this is for biodiversity.
Michael O'Callaghan
My feeling about this is that we know that there have been no long-term human health studies on the effect of eating GM foods. The biotech lobby claims there is no problem. The scientific risk assessment procedure used by the EU is faulty on many good scientific counts. Peter Saunders, a professor of applied mathematics at Kings College, London, will explain this at our conference in June. Research has been done by independent scientists on the health aspects, particularly on the nutrition; Dr. Mae-Wan Ho has published some of this in a very well researched paper [i.e. The Case for a GM-free Sustainable World which you can download here ‚ Ed.].
Woman in green jacket
A lot of the health research I've seen suggests that the health effects come from the accompaniments, the things that are used as the genetic markers in the plants, and not from the modification itself. It's very easy for the industry to say oh well, we'll change our technique.
Michael O'Callaghan
That's interesting. The whole issue of GM is complicated because you have bacterial genes or virus material which is used to transport the modified genes into the recipient organism. Then you also have antibiotic marker genes that are added to identify whether the modified genes have been successfully inserted, so it's a whole mishmash of things, a whole package, and there are fundamental problems with the science. So I think that strategically we shouldn't be taking risks of that magnitude with people's health, based on the Precautionary Principle, but the fact that these things escape and the risk that some of the modified traits will spread in totally unpredictable ways to other parts of the ecosystem dwarfs the health risks.
Woman next to Richard Auler
I'd like to ask three questions to you. How does the World Health Organisation stand on all this? Also Monsanto: the information is kind of sketchy as to who they are, who they represent, who they are affiliated to ‚ I heard Wyeth thrown out there, this is news to me. I don't know who are we dealing with in this situation. I know they are a multinational and they have lots of money behind them, but who exactly are those guys? And my third question would be as a citizen with the Council elections coming up. They are coming door to door and these are the people that are going to represent me in government: what can I say to them to stop this going ahead?
Michael O'Callaghan
Question number one: I don't know what the World Health Organisation's policy is. Does anyone here?
Michael Lemass
I'm sure they are saying it is going to cure world hunger!
Michael O'Callaghan
Well they might not be. They would be very careful about what they say. But the World Health Organisation was run by Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, the former Prime Minister of Norway, whom the UN commissioned to do study about the collision between human activities and the natural environment. And it was the Brundtland Commission, which she headed, that concluded there is a big problem and we have to have an Earth Summit to discuss it. This lead to the Earth Summit [the United Nations World Conference on Sustainable Development held at Rio de Janeiro in 1992 ‚ Ed.] and the whole series of UN conferences and Treaties that have happened since then. So I guess they would take a very responsible position. They wouldn't be likely to greenwash it. [Note: the WHO is now run by Lee Jong-Wook from Korea. According to their website, " WHO will take an active role in relation to GM foods, primarily for two reasons: (1) on the grounds that public health could benefit enormously from the potential of biotechnology, for example, from an increase in the nutrient content of foods, decreased allergenicity and more efficient food production; and (2) based on the need to examine the potential negative effects on human health of the consumption of food produced through genetic modification, also at the global level. It is clear that modern technologies must be thoroughly evaluated if they are to constitute a true improvement in the way food is produced. Such evaluations must be holistic and all-inclusive, and cannot stop at the previously separated, non-coherent systems of evaluation focusing solely on human health or environmental effects in isolation.î For more, you can download the following: (A) Safety aspects of genetically modified foods of plant origin (Joint FAO/WHO consultation on foods derived from biotechnology, Geneva, Switzerland 29 May - 2 June 2000); (B) Report entitled FAO/WHO Expert Consultation on the Safety Assessement of Foods Derived from Genetically Modified Animals, including Fish (Rome, 17-21 November 2003.]
Woman in green jacket
They do work on the Codex Alimentarius.
(short gap for reel change)
Richard Auler
Ö they change it so often you know. They buy somebody, they take over, they sell the branch, it's a permanent change, it's a hydra.
Michael O'Callaghan
There is a re-branding operation going on all the time, and they are also changing the language. I mean a lot of this is a battle of vocabularies. Think of the concept "weapons of mass destruction.î That was a brilliant piece of propaganda. There is no such thing in Iraq, but yet the world went crazy over it. But it was just a word, that sounded terrifying. They are also constantly changing the vocabulary. Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) is now being substituted by Genetically Engineered (GE) products because people know GMOs, and when people get used to GE they will call it something else. But if you go to two web sites called www.corporatewatch.org and www.corporatewatch.co.uk they would probably have all the information you would want on Monsanto in terms of who they are and their affiliations.
Your third question was what can we do with the local councilors. I think we have to educate them.
Richard Auler
They know nothing.
Woman next to Richard Auler
I'd be happy to educate them when I know what the answers are. I've come here for information, and I'm still kind of a bit at sea about what I can do as a private citizen, from the health point of view. I wanted to know more about it so that's why I came.
Michael O'Callaghan
I think we are all learners here.
Woman next to Richard Auler
What do I say to these guys in one or two sentences that is going to make them stand up and be counted? I believe very much in people power and I think it does work.
Michael O'Callaghan
I would tell them that people all over Europe ‚ governments, regions, companies and consumers - are opposed to GM and that it's a real threat to the Irish economy and to jobs, and to the environment and to future generations. And if they want to find out more, they can visit the GM-free Ireland website at www.gmfreeireland.org.
Bridget Carlin
And we should ask them the question, who's going to pay if it goes wrong?
Richard Auler
The liability. Get everyone on the money. Don't forget that. It's very important!
Woman in white jacket
The other thing you could do is when politicians come to your doorstep, turn it around and ask them to tell you what they know about this issue and what they're doing. And then challenge them on their lack of knowledge and this one billion that's going in the budget and throw the doubt out there, just throw it up and ask them to account for themselves.
Woman next to Richard Auler
Have you ever considered taking out a small advertisement in the Independent, a concise one that will hit people out there and make them think about what is happening?
Michael O'Callaghan
Yes.
Woman next to Richard Auler
Because this organisation here, I can see why the Monsanto guy turned on his heel and left: it doesn't look like a threat to an organisation as big as his. Sorry for saying that but I'm saying it as I see it.
Michael O'Callaghan
Well the organisation doesn't exist. There is no organisation. It's just a conversation at the moment.
Woman in yellow jacket
You know when you said about the spokesperson for the Consumers Association of Ireland being completely for GMO? I'm completely ignorant, but how did he get to be representing us all?
Michael O'Callaghan
Some of you might know Emer O'Siochru from Feasta. She's on the board of the Consumers Association of Ireland, and I was complaining to her. I said who is this guy on the radio saying GM food is going to be great and so on. And she said "he's my uncle!î She said that basically the Irish Consumers Association could be transformed from its present position into a much more dynamic organisation that would really look out for the interests of consumers if three new people joined the board of directors.
Woman in yellow jacket
Is it a voluntary or is national or what is it?
Michael O'Callaghan
I think it's voluntary, and I think to be on the board you have to be a member for a year and then you can run for election. A bit of new blood on that board is urgently needed!
Woman in green jacket
Deasy has also been faced with the Veterinary Union and I think the vets are very much in favour of life sciences generally and biotech in particular.
Michael O'Callaghan
So another area of potential support is the horse racing industry. I was told by a horse breeder that I know told me a story which I believe is apparently quite well known in Irish racing circles. There was straw being used for bedding horses which had been sprayed with Roundup, and there was so much pesticide residue in the straw that the horses were getting sores on their skin, and that the big stud farms now go for organic straw for bedding the horses, and organic grains for feeding them. I think the guys down in Tipperary, Aidan O'Brien and co. who funded the anti-incineration project generally use organic animal feed for their horses.
Cecilia Armelin
Yes, they wouldn't use GM soya.
Michael O'Callaghan
Because these horses are multi-million euro investments and they wouldn't want anything to go wrong. So we need to contact those guys.
Richard Auler
But the decisions are made on the political level. How to get our message onto this level, that is the question.
Cecilia Armelin
There is also a National Association of Health Food stores which is very well organised. They are very against GM foods in any products. So that would be a consumer interest group.
Michael O'Callaghan
I think this whole issue is a learning curve. I've certainly never done anything like this before. I'm learning every day. I think that if a community of stakeholders can reach an agreement about some thing that they need to take collective responsibility for, and translate it into political action, that kind of knowledge that we would gain if we do this together and if we reach the goal of having the country be GM-free, that's the kind of knowledge that could be used for a whole lot of other things. Because ultimately, everywhere around the world governments are doing very foolish things in the name of their citizens, and citizens are losing out. I would imagine that if in X number of months we have the consumers, the food producers, the horse breeders, the farmers, the students, the Irish Countrywomen's Association, the GAA all against GM and in favour of keeping the country GM free, and we go to the government as a block and say "look, we're paying your salaries guys, it's time to change your policyî I think they would do it. Maybe that's wishful thinking, but they work for us.
Joe Glynn
The key must be to build on today. Intellectual property and patents are sometimes referred to as epoch-making inventions. Biotechnology is an epoch-making step. It actually creates a new world, a new legal environment, a new era. One of the unfortunate reasons that the biotech companies are getting away with what they are doing is that while in the environmental sector we have the environmental expertise, and we know there are very strong environmental grounds for exposing it, we are conscious that in terms of economics, in terms of law, in terms of social and health issues, it crosses all sort of disciplines, and they are all technical disciplines in a sense. And the biotech companies know what they are doing. They have the manpower, they have the resources, they have the expertise to drive this multi-disciplinary kind of project where the lawyers are working closely with the scientists to get the legal breaks that they need. They are actually cutting new ground, so it's easy for them to set their agenda, to defend their position, to establish a beachhead or whatever.
And I think we need to do the same thing. As you put it earlier, to have a professional authoritative assessment of the economic risks, something that the ESRI or professional economists would actually respect. And the same thing for the agricultural context, and for the environment. Maybe there is some overlap there but they are actually different disciplines. Then there is the political and legal dimension. All of this is legally ground-breaking, this legitimization of theft, basically, of what was a commons. The genetic pool is a common resource. It's our collective inheritance, all the past generations of our ancestors cultivated and selected and bred for our benefit, for the benefit of themselves and for future generations. That is being plundered. And the natural course of evolution of that genetic pool is being hijacked before our eyes. There are huge legal issues there.
Then we have the ethical and religious and theological issues which Mr. Deasy was keen to dismiss and brush aside as kind of foggy or fudgy. Of course, some people do that. They try to exclude certain disciplines they don't know themselves or that they regard as a bit vague. But the nuns and the priests and the missionaries are acutely aware. Sean McDonagh and people like that are articulate spokespersons and we need to build on those allies in that sphere.
Richard Auler
Not only the priests and the nuns. I'm an atheist and I'm totally against it for ethical reasons!
Woman in yellow jacket
You should equate ethics with religion because they are not the same thing.
Michael O'Callaghan
Good point!
Michael Lemass
I think he's saying they are natural allies.
Joe Glynn
They can actually give weight to our own ethical and philosophical concerns. I think this multi-diciplinary approach is needed. We should perhaps take these one by one and advance the economic, the social, the health the agricultural, the legal assessments.
Brendan Duffy
I agree with the ethical arguments I've heard, although people haven't put them forward here. But Ruaidhri Deasy's point I would take on board too. if you want to create a broad coalition. We are from organic farming; we are already the converted. The health food stores, they're converted. We have them. We have to go out and convince the un-converted. And his point is that if you do get into the ethical arguments, you may polarize people unnecessarily. So you have to build a broad coalition. Stick to the main points. The Precautionary Principle, as I understand it, is overwhelming for any rational person. They would all pick up on the points you were making about health, but also on the biodiversity: it's overwhelmingly strong. If you go into the other areas you will get nit-picking and you are going to alienate some people. It's a valid argument. If you want to get a mass campaign, go on your strong points, focus on those and build a broad coalition.
Michael O'Callaghan
When Timothy Leary was trying to convince people to take LSD, he was interviewed by Playboy magazine and he told them it gives you the best orgasms! So if we're trying to convince mainstream farmers we don't want to start talking about environmental stuff or ethics too much because that is going to frighten them. Ruaidhri's advice was don't mention the word "environmentî or "An Taisceî ‚ don't mention them. Just talk about loss of profits or export markets and the farmers will listen to you. But that does not mean that there is still not room for people who have ethical arguments to make them.
Let's just focus on a couple more questions.
Ruth Hegarty (Euro-Toques Ireland)
Whatever people's personal opinions might be, and I'm sure the ethical arguments are very valid, I think you have to be realistic about it. If you want an effetive campaign, the whole point is knowing your audience. And in the end you're targeting politicians and government. In the end you're targeting the EU. You have to have practical arguments. I think it's very dangerous to get into the ethical arguments. I'm not saying they are not valid arguments ‚ they are ‚ but I think the approach you had today, the speakers that you had, that was an excellent approach. If you take people that are stakeholders, if you take organizations that are chefs, hoteliers, conventional and organic farmers, people who have livelihoods at stake, people who have consumers behind them. And I think that a key argument, and one that the government can't dispute, is consumer choice. And we've seen from the evidence in other countries that the co-existence doesn't work. So that means that with cross-contamination, there won't be consumer choice. That's the key. That's the argument that the campaign really has to go for.
Woman in blue jacket
I think even for the consumer some of these words are too big ‚ consumer - you know? There are many people who are on the dole and they go to the shop. They want to buy organic and they can't afford to buy organic. When I heard you on the radio you said "freedom of choiceî, do you know? I think words that appeal and are simple and mean a lot to the person who's going in to the supermarket to buy things, are important.
Ruth Hegarty
You have to be careful bringing in things like thatÖ
Michael O'Callaghan
Hold on, there are two women here who have been waiting to talk for a long time.
Woman in white jacket
I think it's very obvious that we're all having the same thoughts that what this whole cause needs is the expertise of good PR. Because I think what we need to do is to be able to distill a few essential messages and raise the level of awareness in the public. And that's a very skilled exercise to do properly, it's far easier said than done. We're already preaching to the converted. We're already predisposed, we're educated to a degree about this topic, and look at how multi-faceted and complex it is. You said earlier the more you know about it the less you like it. Those kind of messages, a good PR person would pick out: simple point that stick in the public mind. That it is dangerous, just something terribly simple. The complexities can come later. Now I don't know if we can afford the services of good PR people, but if we can't it struck me that that lady who spoke earlier, that Indian woman Pavitra, she's in Ireland for six months, she's a journalist, if she quietly lobbied some Irish journalists and spoke to them and had them educated about this subject in readiness for the next conference, you could build up strategically a campaign in a very step by step way.
Michael O'Callaghan
Yes, we've been doing that, we've been talking to a lot of journalists in the past couple of weeks and have got some interest.
Young woman in green top
Have you got much international coverage?
Michael O'Callaghan
No, we haven't approached that yet, but that wouldn't be very hard to do once there is a real story. But again, one farmer declaring his land GM-free in Ireland is no big deal because there are thousands in other countries.
Woman in white jacket
There are many stories that are very interesting and a good journalist would see reasons for covering them that we don't see. I mean the bad guys and the good guys. I don't know how much they are able to print legally because it may be libelous, but there are stories there.
Young woman in green top
There will be so much media coverage coming out the EU accession on May Day, unfortunately a lot of it focusing on riots and that side of it, but I think you could sell the world press this kind of thing coming out of the EU and how Ireland is going to be affected.
Woman in green jacket
Somehow the issue has gotten far more coverage in other countries. I think the world press would find Ireland's level of involvement of little interest.
Michael O'Callaghan
The fact that there has been so little media coverage here is itself a story worthy of coverage!
Michael Lemass
With any kind of media coverage you have to tie in your message with something that is going on. So from my point of view you could perhaps drop it into the health box, cause health is a huge election issue. I don't know if people have made the connection today. People are scared of nuclear contamination because it lasts for a thousand generations. GMOs last for ever once it's out there. I mean that's a very simple argument. The other thing is you are what you eat, so if you're going for organic and GM-free, it's a quality of life decision and it's also a health decision both for you and your successive generations.
Ruth Hegarty
The health thing is a bit dodgy though, because whatever we might think about it, we don't have proof to say it does damage your health. They're going to argue the exact opposite thing. We have to argue that we don't know what's going to happen.
Michael Lemass
You have to tailor your argument for who you're actually communicating with.
Woman in striped top
Just to get back to simple points, the basic thing is that consumers haven't asked for GM food or GM anything. I think that all consumers have power, the power of where they put their money. They can go to the supermarket and ask why are you stoking this? Can you stock a GM-free alternative for me, because otherwise I'm not going to shop here? Then we've got power and that will make the shopkeepers think, and make the person who's standing next to you in the queue think. Because they can make GM food all they like, but it's going to flop if nobody buys it.
Ruth Hegarty
That's absolutely true, but they can start growing GM crops in Ireland without anyone having bought GM food, and it will be too late for Irish consumers to choose at that point because conventional crops will be contaminated.
Woman in striped top
I agree. We should cover all angles. You shouldn't leave out ethics, or leave out food, or leave out emotions even, or say "oh, I don't know anything so maybe I should just accept GMOs.î You mightn't know anything about the technology but you feel in your heart that it's wrong, it's wrong for nature.
Ruth Hegarty
I agree completely with what you're saying, but what this other lady said is a really good point. It comes down to PR. When you want to lobby the government, it's about PR and it's about the message you put across. And unfortunately even though I agree completely with what you said, if you're being realistic about it, if you go with that approach to the government and you say this is what we believe in our hearts, we just think it's wrong, that's not going to work, they're just going to go "greens, hippies, blah blahî. That's just the reality.
Joe Glynn
I think there's a danger of confusion though. There are lots of different points we can advance. We should remember as well, as Michael said earlier, the audience that we're addressing is very diverse. It's not just the government.
Michael O'Callaghan
It's an art, it's an art-form to communicate the message.
Joe Glynn
You have to pitch your message to a particular audience, to rally support from different sectors. I personally believe the ethical arguments are very strong, and they merge into economic arguments because there is economic injustice involved. We have a critical mass here now. We need to recognize that we actually have all of these strands to the argument: the medical, the economic arguments and so on. We need to bolster those up and we need to look at the territory in which we're operating, the actual context in which we're operating. We are the anti-GM lobby as it were. So we need to look at how we can strategically prioritize our actions, look at what sectors we can engage, and systematically build momentum to reach particular audiences with a targeted messageÖ
Michael O'Callaghan
The farm organizations, the food industry
Joe Glynn
Öand build the expertise on the farming arguments and also on the legal side, to recognize ourselves as a multi-disciplinary lobby.
Michael O'Callaghan
Another point is that three quarters of the people here in this room now are of the female gender, which says something.
Joe Glynn
There's a danger men will be discriminated against!
(laughter)
Michael O'Callaghan
Women and children and pregnant mothers. It's a real nurturing issue. I mean it's fundamentally about the food we eat. I would love to find a way to engage the Irish Countrywomen's Association on this. Are any of you people members of it?
Cecilia Armelin
No. The other thing I was going to say is regarding ethics. I studied this while I was at university and the person I was studying with said "I don't want to hear any talk about religion when we're doing this course. You can talk about ethics from a non-religious perspective.
Michael O'Callaghan
The Dalai Lama calls it secular ethics!
Cecilia Armelin
It's logical. Logic is a complement to ethics, so it's logical to say you don't want these foods going into a baby feed that's going into their life. The other thing I was going to say regarding health: the Indian lady mentioned in her talk about how the genetically modified food changes the bacterial flora in your intestines, and this was in a study produced two years ago. The McGarrisson Society has written it up. And that's related to cancer. So it is a health issue.
Michael O'Callaghan
Dr. Arpad Pustai, the doctor who did that research, will come in June to give a policy briefing on the health aspects. It would be great to make sure we can get a lot of health professionals to come and listen to him, a few key people from the Department of Health.
Michael Lemass
Another very simple audience to target is mothers, who want to give their babies the best possible food. The evidence for that is how organic baby food took off.
Michael O'Callaghan
In Germany apparently it's almost impossible to buy non-organic baby food in shops.
Cecilia Armelin
At that meeting we went to, Michael, of the European Greens, the woman in front of me was the dietician employed by the Department of Health. And she's very against my practice and organic food. And she was going "yes, yesî to things that Patrick O'Reilly of Monsanto was saying. And you may remember, I said at the meeting that Monsanto are priding themselves on producing a fat that has no flavour with Omega 3 fatty acids ‚ the fish fats. And I said we have fat in food to give it flavour, we don't want to omit fat or make fat really low because it has flavour and it also has very high functions in your body for the immune system and to your brain cells. We want to get at the Department of Health and that dietician. She's a nice lady and all and I've known her for years, but if they can be convinced then invite them, but they are very orthodox.
Richard Auler
We should be for responsible science. We should not be anti GM, because if you say "anti" there is a shutter going down for some people: I'm not against incineration, I'm for responsible resource management.
Michael O'Callaghan
That's why our campaign is called GM-free Ireland.
Well, it's time to call this discussion to an end now. Many thanks for coming. I hope you found it worthwhile, and look on our web site at www.gmfreeireland.org for details of our forthcoming conference planned for the weekend on 19 - 20 June.
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