GMO/GE

Suddenly, and without much warning, biotech companies are rushing to get gene-altered products onto the shelves of local stores.

Review by Colin Graham, of
The Ecological Risks of Engineered Crops, Jane Risseler and Margaret Mellon; The MIT Press, 1996, 128 pp.

Consumers can help puncture the inflated claims of giant agrochemical companies. The science of gene splicing has appeared rather suddenly as an arcane, sometimes hopeful, but more often threatening technology. Polls show that 80% of British Columbians would, if given the choice, avoid transgenic food.

Author finds the concept of patented products difficult to digest.

by Liza Morris

The frequent use of such fearful terms as "Frankenstein foods" and "terminator seeds" to describe the products of the biotechnology industry is a clear sign of the public's growing concern over the proliferation of genetically modified food crops worldwide.

by Aaron Freeman
Reprinted from the Hill Times, Canada's parliamentary newspaper, November 2001

Consumers can be forgiven for being cynical about biotechnology. After all, it's hard to know who to trust when there's no clear line between the biotech industry, government and organizations that claim to be on the side of consumers.

Monsanto's highly-touted GE wheat joins the growing list of obituaries of Frankenfoods and crops.

by Ronnie Cummins, Organic Consumers Association
Excerpted from BioDemocracy News #40, August 2002

Contrary to the claims of a literal army of public relations flacks, indentured politicians, and scientists, the first wave of genetically engineered (GE) foods and crops have apparently suffered a fatal haemorrhage. Future historians will likely record Tuesday, July 30, 2002 as the beginning of the end, the day of irreversible decline for Monsanto and the Gene Giants.

On that day, facing mounting global opposition from farmers, consumers, and even major US food transnationals such as General Mills, Monsanto was forced to announce that they were backing off

Government and industry are not telling us everything we need to know about genetically modified (GM) foods.

Reviewed by Sue Frazer

Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies About the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You’re Eating, Jeffrey M. Smith, 2003. ISBN 0-9729665-8-7, $17.95 pb., pp. 289, with index. Yes! Books, PO Box 469, Fairfield, IA 52556. Ph: (888) 717-7000 www.seedsofdeception.com

The Foreword is by Frances Moore Lappé. Thirty years ago she wrote Diet for a Small Planet, an ex­plosive best-seller that challenged us to use the world’s food resources more efficiently. Today, she says world hunger is further complicated—and compromised—by

by Brewster Kneen

The CFIA came into being April 1, 1997, and it has been a bad – and costly – joke ever since. It was set up to make it appear as a credible, independent agency of the Canadian Government, to “consolidate inspection, and animal and plant health services of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Health Canada, and Fisheries and Oceans Canada,” reporting to the

Compiled by Delores Broten

In June, over the legal appeals of the company, Greenpeace won the public release from the German government of a Monsanto research document on its genetically engineered corn, Mon 863. The study, over 1100 pages long, gave the details of a 90-day test feeding of the genetically engineered corn to rats. It raised eyebrows and questions of credibility in the scientific community, but does not appear to have raised any questions in the bureaucracies of Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. 

Mon 863 was approved for general use in Canada in 2003, although the Canadian authorities did not have access to the rat-feeding trials, because they don’t require them. Perhaps, given the problems that

by Jeffrey M. Smith, author of Seeds of Deception

The Russian scientist planned a simple experiment to see if eating genetically modifi ed (GM) soy might infl uence offspring. What she got, however, was an astounding result that may threaten a multi-billion dollar industry. 

Irina Ermakova, a leading scientist at the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of

by Stephanie Orford

In the late ‘90s and early 2000s, genetically modified (GM) or genetically engineered (GE) crops were a hot-button issue around the world. They were originally developed by corporations like Monsanto to increase yield by keeping crops insect repellent and tolerant of herbicides. Companies spoke of crops that would feed impoverished countries, manufacture pharmaceuticals and clean up the environment. Critics called GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) a multi-pronged threat to human health, the environment, and even democracy.