Moves afoot at Westminster to strip the Scottish Government of its powers over labelling food and content are motivated by the intention to force more genetically modified (GM) food crops into being grown here.
A million pound publicity campaign is being mounted to persuade the public that GM foods are safe to eat.
In the vanguard of the Labour Government’s ploy is the UK Food Standards Agency. A GM disciple, Lord Rooker (never better named) has been appointed Chair of the FSA.
On 18th September senior officials of the FSA met their peers in the industry umbrella body – the Agricultural Biotechnology Council (ABC). The meeting was attended by representatives of ABC’s Novel Foods, Additives and Supplements Division. The core focus was on strategies to change EU regulations which prevent GM-contaminated foodstuffs from being sent back to the USA.
The FSA has also established a ‘Consumer Engagement Project’. This means that they’re coming to get us. We are to be persuaded (and if that doesn’t do the trick yu can count on our being coerced or kept in the dark – in that order).
The Agency says: ‘We have been asked by the UK Government to lead a dialogue project to explore the subject of GM with consumers. This will be led by an independent steering group and membership will consist of people involved in different areas of GM and with different views’.
With members all involved in GM, this mooted difference in views is unlikely to amount to more than ‘this year or next’.
Straightforwardly, the premise of such a dialogue is a known untruth. GM foods are not safe. Neither scientists nor the UK Government know or can prove that this is the case.
On the contrary, serious scientific research in 1998 showed that the brains and immune systes of rats were damaged by eating GM potatoes.
This research was carried out by Dr Arpal Pusztai, working for the Rowell Research Institute – who promptly sacked him after his research findings were published. It was then revealed that the Rowell Research Instotute was in receipt of £140,000 from Monsanto, a leading company in the GM production industry. Only a cynic would suggest a connection between this funding source, Dr Pusztai’s research results and his sacking.
GM foods are scientifically engineered foods where the genes of one species are introduced into another to produce crops whose antecedents represent very different species and which combine animal, vegetable and mineral. For instance, the gene of the everyday tomato has been crossed with genes from fish. And soya products have been contaminated by GM processes for so long that soya’s genetic purity is irrecoverable.
This ability to cross genes across a wide spectrum of species leaves us eating things that look familiar but are naturally impossible hydrids. No one has any idea what the long term consequences of this forced marriage of genes will bring. Neither does anyone know what will happen when natural processes such as the cross-pollenation carried out by bees, intoduces one laboratory-bred hybrid to another.
The powerful pro-GM-foods lobby argues that these laboratory engineered seeds produce crops which are more reliable and – the real issue – cheaper to produce. This lobby – unsurprisingly – includes biotechnology firms and maor supermarket chains.
With the profit motive driving the move – behind straightfaced expressions of a desire to help third world countries struggling to feed their populations (why have we never simply given them European surpluses?) – the desperate Labour Government with its heavily indebted party could be suspected of working to facilitate potential sponsors.
Remember that at the start of his period in power, Tony Blair appointed big-time Labour party donor and known campaigner for GM foods, Lord Sainsbury, as Science Minister. Sainsbury was naturally hard to separate from the interests of his family’s supermarket chain, which stocks GM foods and which had invested in two companies with interests in GM products.
GM foods are popularly known as ‘Frankenstein foods’. This may seem a lurid description but it accounts for one of the most dangerous processes yet engaged in by science because it had the capacity to leave no life free from its influence. We all have to eat.
At the moment foods must be labelled to show whether or not they contain GM material. Westminster wishes to bring back within its own power the will to vary that requirement. This would leave food produced from genetically modified sources to be made available invisibly to the general public. We would be given no way of knowing whether or not we were eating it.
This Westminster strategy was launched by recommendations in the Calman Commission, called for by the previous leaderene of the Scottish Labour group, Wendy Alexander and involving the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat groups at Holyrood.
These 3 groups signed up to the following provision in the Calman report - that the Scottish Government should no longer have: ‘the power to legislate on food content and labelling in so far as that legislation would cause a breach of the single market in the UK’.
This is potentially one of the most profoundly irresponsible steps that could be taken by a Government that has already proved itself one of the most irresponsible in British history.
It is indefensible that a threadbare and moribund Government, lacking any moral compass and in its last throes before dispatch, should be able to pass such legislation into the statute book, confining future administrations.
It is not surprising that at least two of the three opposition parties in Holyrood supported the Calman Commission move. An early Labour/Lib Dem administration at Holyrood enabled the trial growing of GM rape seed on the Black Isle in Cromarty and it is known that conditions in this trial were less than secure from rogue transmission.
The current Scottish Government has rightly set its face against GM foods. Environment Minister Roseanna Cunningham has festated this, saying: ‘There are currently no GM crops grown in Scotland and, in so far as responsibility ies at Holyrood, we will ensure that remains the case.
‘Scotland produces the best food and drink in the world – our agriculture, exporters and environment will be all the better for remaining GM crops free’.