Part 6: Soil Association complaint to UK High Commissioner for Canada
Mr James Wright
High Commissioner for Canada
MacDonald House
1 Grosvenor Square
London W1K 4AB
4 September 2007
I am writing on behalf of the Soil Association to ask you to ensure that your Government takes action against one of your employees, Shane Morris, who is trying to defend an extraordinarily misleading scientific paper by threatening free speech in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.
In brief, a paper published by Doug Powell, University of Guelph, and others [1], claims to have shown that consumers prefer GM to non-GM corn, given a free choice. What the paper failed to disclose was that the bin of sweetcorn that was non-GM had a sign beside it saying "Would you eat wormy sweetcorn?", while the bin of GM corn had a sign above it saying "Here's what went into producing quality sweetcorn". These signs were witnessed and photographed by a reporter from the Toronto Star, who noted that labelling one lot of sweetcorn "wormy" and the other lot "quality" hardly provided a neutral choice for consumers.
The paper by Jeff Wilson, Doug Powell, Katija Blaine and Shane Morris published in the British Food Journal claimed that the researchers took great trouble not to bias consumer choice. No mention was made of the "wormy" and "quality" signs, nor indeed a number of pro-GM fact sheets which were made available to consumers during the experiment.
I'm sure you will agree that this is a disgrace, and the fact that one of the scientists works for the Canadian Government must give you great cause for concern. I am sure the Canadian Government has no wish to be associated with deliberately misleading scientific papers, and I look forward to the Canadian Government disassociating itself from this extraordinary paper.
Despite calls from leading scientists and others, the British Food Journal has so far failed to withdraw this paper, and I hope the Canadian Government will now encourage them to do so.
Finally, presumably in an effort to stop news of this unscientific and unprofessional behaviour gaining wider currency, your Government's employee, Mr Morris, has tried to close down one of the most respected websites dealing with information about GM, farming and food (GM Watch) and also has issued legal threats against a respected organisation in Ireland, GM Free Ireland. You will no doubt be aware that the call to make Ireland GM free has the support of the Irish Government, and I hope the Canadian Government will immediately disassociate from attempts by one of their employees to undermine the wishes of a democratically elected government.
I am copying this to His Excellency The Irish Ambassador.
Peter Melchett
Policy Director
The Soil Association
South Plaza, Marlborough Street,
Bristol BS1 3NX, UK
[1. Powell DA, Blaine K, Morris S and Wilson J. Agronomic and consumer considerations for Bt and conventional sweet-corn. British Food Journal 2003, 105 (10), 700-713]
Comment by GM-free Ireland:
On 13 September 2007, a group of biotech lobbyists responded to Peter Melchett's call for the Canadian Government to rein in
Shane Morris, through an open letter to the UK High Commissioner for Canada and to Peter Melchett which they published on the AgBioView website, claiming that "Government action against Mr. Morris would have a chilling effect on the freedom of speech of Canadian scientists, and of scientists around the world." This letter, with comments from GM Watch, may be found in part 10 of this section of our web site.
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