{"id":146557,"date":"2015-04-23T17:42:00","date_gmt":"2015-04-23T17:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?guid=227399058aa0ed78b261f92dce1cf065"},"modified":"2015-04-27T16:06:32","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T16:06:32","slug":"who-granted-the-gmo-evangelists-the-monopoly-on-compassion-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/who-granted-the-gmo-evangelists-the-monopoly-on-compassion-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Granted The GMO Evangelists The Monopoly On Compassion?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Apparently, I am a “nut job” because I adhere to anti-capitalist, socialist, human-hating ideology. Not only that, I am working to keep millions in poverty and assisting in “crimes against humanity.” I guess that\u2019s the type of thing human-hating ‘nut job’ individuals do. Well, it is according to the warped world view of pro-GMO individual Paul Evans, who appears to be associated with the ‘allow golden rice’ website and the ‘Galileo Movement’.<\/div>\n
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I recently joined Twitter and quickly came to realise it is a place where many go to vent their venom. My recent interaction with Evans led him to hurl such accusations because he disparagingly commented on one of my previous articles (this one<\/a>), and I happened to respond by raising some of the issues set out below in the hope of having some kind of informed, reasonable debate. With hindsight, there was little chance of that happening.<\/div>\n
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Evans’s attitude is commonplace among supporters of GMOs who seem to have utter contempt for anyone who questions the need for or the efficacy of this technology and merely accuse critics of engaging in “conspiracy” (as Evans did).<\/div>\n
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But this is part of the strategy many pro-GMO campaigners engage in. For example, back in February former UK Environment Minister Owen Paterson accused Greenpeace of condemning people in the developing world to death by refusing to accept genetically modified crops.\u00a0Paterson asserted<\/a>:<\/div>\n
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\u201cNot since the original Luddites smashed cotton mill machinery in early 19th century England, have we seen such an organised, fanatical antagonism to progress and science. These enemies of the Green Revolution call themselves \u2018progressive\u2019, but their agenda could hardly be more backward-looking and regressive\u2026 their policies would condemn billions to hunger, poverty and underdevelopment [with their]… insistence on mandating primitive, inefficient farming techniques\u2026.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

This is the type of standard PR spin that many prominent figures use to attack their critics. The pro-GMO lobby has a history of engaging in abuse, emotional blackmail and the smearing of critics. Anyone who opposes GM crops or food is painted as an\u00a0enemy of the poor<\/a>\u00a0because they take food from their bellies\u00a0or are even “murdering bastards<\/a>,” according to Evans\u2019s colleague Patrick Moore (he of \u2018I\u2019ll drink a quart of glyphosate’ fame, before hurling abuse at the interviewer as he stormed out of the interview).<\/div>\n
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Abuse laced with rhetoric is deliberately designed to mislead, deflect and stir up public emotion. Such tactics are part of a wider agenda that includes making dubious claims about the efficacy of GMO technology and are intended to divert attention away from the true nature and causes of hunger and food poverty.<\/div>\n
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While constantly espousing the values of ‘sound science’ and rational debate (two things the industry has done\u00a0much to undermine<\/a>\u00a0or circumvent), prominent figures within the GMO lobby\/sector evangelize about \u00a0‘saving the world’ and praise the wonders of the ‘second coming’ (of the ‘green revolution’ – GMOs). And woe betide\u00a0any scientist<\/a>\u00a0who challenges the faith – or any non-scientist for that matter: the uncaring, green blob of campaigners and activists who despise humanity as much as they hate compassion – or so the rhetoric goes.<\/div>\n
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You see, only the pro-GMO brigade has the right to care. It has attempted to secure the monopoly on caring and compassion for the world’s vulnerable. If there were a patent for compassion, they would have grabbed it by now.<\/div>\n
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Proponents of GM crops constantly claim that we need such technology to address hunger and to feed a growing global population. If you do not agree with this premise and offer an alternative solution then you are depicted as anti-human, a \u2018nut job\u2019 or much worse.<\/div>\n
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We are told by the GMO biotech lobby that GM crops are essential, are better for the environment and will provide the tools that farmers need in a time of climate chaos. It is claimed that GM crops provide higher yields and higher incomes for farmers around the world. All such claims have been shown to be either overstated generalisations or plain bogus.<\/div>\n
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The Canadian Biotechnology Action Network (CBAN) last year released a fully referenced report that concluded hunger is caused by poverty and inequality and that we already produce enough food to feed the world\u2019s population and did so even at the peak of the world food crisis in 2008.<\/div>\n
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The GM crops that are on the market today are not designed to address hunger. Four GM crops account for almost 100 percent of worldwide GM crop acreage, and all four have been developed for large-scale industrial farming systems and are used as cash crops for export, to produce fuel or for processed food and animal feed.<\/div>\n
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The report from CBAN also stated that GM crops have not tended to increase yields and do not tend to increase farmers\u2019 incomes. GM crops often lead to an increase in pesticide use and cause further harm to the environment. (Read the\u00a0full report<\/a>\u00a0containing over 100 references in support of the claims made.)<\/div>\n
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Hunger, food security and \u2018feeding the world\u2019 is a political, social and economic problem and no amount of gene splicing is capable of surmounting obstacles like poor roads, inadequate rural credit systems and insufficient irrigation. Any talk about backward, regressive, primitive farming practices that would condemn millions to\u00a0hunger and decimate the ecology is again playing on fear and emotion. This has no basis in reality.<\/div>\n
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Numerous official reports have argued that to feed the hungry in poorer regions we need to support diverse, sustainable agro-ecological methods of farming and strengthen local food economies: see\u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0UN report,\u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0official report,\u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and\u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0report by 400 experts which was twice peer reviewed.<\/div>\n
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Indeed, agroecology is at the centre of a\u00a0struggle for sustainability, land, food security and self-determination<\/a>. It’s not a fad. It has fed the world for centuries. However, industrialised global agriculture has taken control of food and land and has resulted in placing power in the hands of a few global corporations. In the process communities have been destroyed and millions displaced. It’s a global phenomenon.<\/div>\n
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Look no further than India to see the how the policy framework has been accelerated by the\u00a0Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture<\/a>\u00a0to eventually\u00a0drive hundreds of millions from the land<\/a>\u00a0there to benefit Western agribusiness and retail interests. A prominent pro-GMO mouthpiece, who also talks much about compassion for the vulnerable, recently said my analysis and concern about such things were merely based on anti-capitalist “romantic twaddle.” Perhaps people like Patrick Moore should tell that to the hundreds of millions who are now fighting for their land and livelihoods or who are being\u00a0denied investment<\/a>\u00a0and supportive policies because priorities lie elsewhere, not least with subsidy-sucking rich corporations that have failed to deliver. Such compassion.<\/div>\n
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It is small farms and peasant farmers (usually serving local communities without GMOs) that are more productive than giant industrial (export-oriented) farms and which produce most of the world\u2019s food (see\u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0from GRAIN). The experience with GM crops shows that the application of GM technology is more likely to actually undermine food security and entrench the social, economic and environmental problems created by industrial agriculture and corporate control (see\u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0this<\/a>).<\/div>\n
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\u201cThe problem is that the poor have no money to buy food and increasingly, no access to land on which to grow it\u2026 GM is a dangerous distraction from real solutions and claims that GM can help feed the world can be viewed as\u00a0exploitation of the suffering of the hungry<\/strong>.\u201d From the report\u00a0GMOs Myths and Truths<\/a>\u00a0(my emphasis).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

The pro-GMO lobby seems oblivious to – or is at least content to side line – the often devastating, deleterious health, environmental, social and economic impacts of GMOs.<\/div>\n
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When the pro-GMO lobby talks about \u2018enemies\u2019 of the \u2018green revolution\u2019 as being fanatical ideologues, they may wish to consider that the \u2018green revolution\u2019 was not the resounding success they like to portray it as.\u00a0Raj Patel<\/a>\u00a0provides some revealing insight into how the \u2018green revolution\u2019 took credit for many gains in Indian agricultural that were due to other influences.<\/div>\n
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And, of course, the \u2018green revolution\u2019 was based on, among other things, massive external inputs, violence, severe environmental and human health degradation and debt (see\u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 \u2018The Violence of the Green Revolution\u2019 \u2014 and\u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0this<\/a>, which highlight the agrarian crisis in Punjab, the original \u2018poster boy\u2019 of the \u2018green revolution\u2019).<\/div>\n
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So why do prominent figures do themsleves no favour at all by engaging in vitriolic attacks on critics? It\u2019s because the pro-GMO lobby has a big problem. It cannot provide a convincing case for GMOs or claim popular support for the technology. It therefore claims the monopoly on compassion and resorts to populism, intimidation, character assassination, emotional blackmail, fear mongering and baseless claims.<\/div>\n
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Many within the pro-GMO lobby espouse the virtues of \u2018choice\u2019, \u2018democracy\u2019 and neoliberalism, in the erroneous belief the latter is a prerequisite for choice and democracy. This is ideology and nothing more. But they have to adopt this line because the companies behind GMOs are very much part of the neoliberal agenda and benefit immensely from it (see\u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0about the neoliberal invasion of India and Monsanto’s role).<\/div>\n
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It\u2019s an agenda that champions the type of privatisation, public expenditure reduction, deregulation, tax avoiding and \u2018free\u2019 trade policies that has ceded policy decision making to powerful corporate players. This has in turn led to a\u00a0concentration of wealth<\/a>\u00a0and imposed \u2018austerity\u2019 and drives hunger, poverty, land grabs and the disappearance of family\/peasant farms (see\u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0analysis of food commodity speculation,\u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0description of the global food system and\u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0report by the Oakland Institute on land grabs) \u2014 which are the\u00a0very bedrock<\/a>\u00a0of global food production.<\/div>\n
What the agritech cartel offers is more of the same by tearing up traditional agriculture.<\/div>\n
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It\u2019s easy to talk about Luddites and environmentalists condemning millions to poverty and underdevelopment with regressive policies. It\u2019s a lazy, emotive, superficial pseudo-analysis of a complex situation.<\/div>\n
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Corporate interests in the West have\u00a0condemned tens of millions to hardship<\/a><\/span>.<\/span>\u00a0In collusion with the\u00a0World Bank, IMF and WTO<\/a>, agriculture has for many decades been an important means by which US foreign policy has created\u00a0dependence and subservience<\/a>.\u00a0The current global system of\u00a0unsustainable<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0chemical-industrial agriculture (which GMOs form part of) and World Trade Organisation rules that agritech companies\u00a0helped draw up<\/a>\u00a0for their benefit to get their products into countries\u00a0are a major cause of structural hunger and poverty and environmental destruction.<\/div>\n
Blaming critics of this system for the inherent problems of the system is highly convenient.<\/div>\n
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When the pro-GMO lobby accuses its critics as being “murderers”, “anti-human”, “elitist” and “regressive”, it is merely attempting to shift the focus from its own regressive ideology.<\/div>\n
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Paul Evans, mentioned at the start of this piece, likes to call himself a “humanitarian”. Owen Paterson also perceives he is. Whether it is \u2018humanitarianism\u2019, \u2018anti-human\u2019, \u2018human hating\u2019 or \u2018enemy of the poor\u2019, certain words and phrases are used cheaply by some. Stripped of their dictionary meaning, their use by is rendered meaningless and nonsensical.<\/div>\n
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But that\u2019s the whole point isn\u2019t it? Such rhetoric is indeed sheer nonsense.<\/div>\n
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Colin Todhunter is an independent writer and former social policy researcher:\u00a0colintodhunter.com<\/a><\/div>\n
https:\/\/twitter.com\/colin_todhunter<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apparently, I am a “nut job” because I adhere to anti-capitalist, socialist, human-hating ideology. Not only that, I am working to keep millions in poverty and assisting in “crimes against humanity.” I guess that\u2019s the type of thing human-hating ‘nut job’ individuals do. Well, it is according to the warped world view of pro-GMO individual […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1214,"featured_media":146625,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-146557","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1214"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}