NO to GMO on PLANET EARTH

 "Genetic engineering enables scientists to create plants, animals and micro-organisms by manipulating genes in a way that does not occur naturally. These genetically modified organisms (GMOs) can spread through nature and interbreed with natural organisms, thereby contaminating non 'GE' environments and future generations in an unforeseeable and uncontrollable way. Their release is 'genetic pollution' and is a major threat because GMOs cannot be recalled once released into the environment.

Because of commercial interests, the public is being denied the right to know about GE ingredients in the food chain, and therefore losing the right to avoid them despite the presence of labelling laws in certain countries.

Biological diversity must be protected and respected as the global heritage of humankind, and one of our world's fundamental keys to survival.
GMOs should not be released into the environment since there is not an adequate scientific understanding of their impact on the environment and human health.

We advocate immediate interim measures such as labelling of GE ingredients, and the segregation of genetically engineered crops and seeds from conventional ones. We also oppose all patents on plants, animals and humans, as well as patents on their genes. Life is not an industrial commodity. When we force life forms and our world's food supply to conform to human economic models rather than their natural ones, we do so at our own peril.

Most hungry people live in countries that have food surpluses rather than deficits. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), we are already producing one and a half times the amount of food needed to provide everyone in the world with an adequate and nutritious diet, yet one in seven people is suffering from hunger.

Rather than growing food to meet the needs of local communities for a healthy, diverse diet, industrial agriculture produces crops to sell on world markets. While world crop production has increased since the 1950s, more people go hungry now than 20 years ago. Small family farmers are driven off their land and local people cannot afford to buy what is grown. Too often, the result is a downward spiral of environmental destruction, poverty and hunger.
Food security will not be achieved by technical fixes, like genetic engineering (GE). People who need to eat need access to land on which to grow food or money with which to buy food. Technological 'solutions' like GE mask the real social, political, economic and environmental problems responsible for hunger.

The case of Argentina, the number two producer of GE crops in the world and the only developing country growing GE food crops on a large commercial scale, shows that GE does not lead to an increase in food security. Millions of tons of GE soya are exported every year from Argentina for cattle feed, while millions of Argentineans go hungry.

The real causes of hunger:

Poverty and lack of access to resources: Hunger and malnutrition are a direct result of a lack of access to, or exclusion from, productive resources, such as land, the forests, the seas, water, seeds, technology and credit. Seventy-five percent of the world's hungry are politically marginalised people who live in rural areas. An example of the grossly unequal distribution of land that directly contributes to hunger: in Latin America, 80 percent of agricultural land is in the hands of 20 percent of the farmers; the other 20 percent of the land is in the hands of the remaining 80 percent.

Unfair trade regimes: The current agricultural trade system puts the South in an impossible situation. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) annual state subsidies of their national agricultural sectors exceed Sub-Saharan Africa's entire Gross Domestic Product. Subsidised exports, artificially low prices and WTO legalised dumping by the rich countries characterise the current unfair model of agricultural trade faced by poor countries.

Orientation of research towards industrial agriculture rather than towards the needs of marginal farmers: Research often neglects the development of agricultural techniques that reduce the inputs needed and that are easy to control. Agricultural research at international and national levels is highly orientated towards industrial agriculture.

Considering the severity of the potential threat to human health and reproduction, we are demanding a recall of all GE food and crops from the market, worldwide.

The study, sponsored by the Austrian Ministries for Agriculture and Health, was at a scientific seminar in Vienna, Austria. Prof. Dr. Zentek, Professor for Veterinary Medicine at the University of Vienna and lead author of the study, summarised the findings: Mice fed with GE maize had less offspring in the third and fourth generations, and these difference were statistically significant. Mice fed with non-GE maize reproduced more efficiently. This effect can be attributed to the differences in the food source.

"GE food appears to be acting as a birth control agent, potentially leading to infertility - if this is not reason enough to close down the whole biotech industry once and for all, I am not sure what kind of disaster we are waiting for," said Dr. Jan van Aken, GE expert at Greenpeace International. "Playing genetic roulette with our food crops is like playing Russian roulette with consumers and public health".

The Austrian scientists performed several long-term feeding trials with laboratory mice over a course of 20 weeks. One of the studies was a so-called reproductive assessment by continuous breeding (RACB) trial, in which the same parent generation gave birth to several litters of baby mice. The parents were fed either with a diet containing 33% of a GE maize variety (NK 603 x MON 810), or a closely related non-GE variety. A decrease in litter size and weight was found to be statistically significant in the third and fourth litters in the GE-fed mice compared to the control group.

Owned by Monsanto, the GE maize variety tested in this study is tolerant to a herbicide and resistant to certain insect pests. It has been approved for planting and food use in a variety of countries, including the US, Argentina, Japan, Philippines and South Africa. In Mexico and the European Union(1), it is approved for food and feed use

 "This study is yet another example that the food and feed safety of GE crops and food cannot be guaranteed. The reproductive toxicity of this GE maize was a totally unexpected result, but regulators around the world had considered this GE maize variety as safe as non-GE varieties - a potentially devastating error," said Dr. van Aken.

Genetically engineering of the food we eat is an inherently risky process. Current understanding of genetics is extremely limited and scientists do not know the long-term effects of releasing these unpredictable organisms into the environment and people's diets.

Due to consumer pressure, supermarkets in many countries have cleared genetically engineered (GE) food from their shelves and global food companies have removed GE ingredients from their products. In addition, some leading pig and poultry producers have promised not to supply animals with GE feed. 
Consumers should be protected from the dangers of GE food, in the whole world. However in many countries food manufacturers and corporations are failing or refusing to inform the public about the presence of genetically engineered ingredients in their products.

Consumers have the right to know and the right to choose: While labelling does not fully address the concerns of GE ingredients, it at least allows the consumer to make informed choices and decisions. Information about a product would enable and assist consumers who would want to take a precautionary approach in their food choices to do so. Moreover, failure to provide information is considered a breach of fair trade.

The introduction of genetically engineered (GE) organisms into the complex ecosystems of our environment is a dangerous global experiment with nature and evolution. Genetic scientists are altering life itself. The products of genetic engineering are living organisms that could never have evolved naturally and do not have a natural habitat. 

These human-made organisms can reproduce and interbreed with natural organisms, thereby spreading to new environments and future generations in an unpredictable and uncontrollable way. Because we know so little about how these novel organisms will act in the environment, and because these living organisms can multiply and spread, the potentially harmful effects of GE organisms may only be discovered when it is too late.

For these reasons, GE organisms (or GMOs - genetically modified organisms) must not be released into the environment. They pose unacceptable risks to ecosystems, and threaten biodiversity, wildlife and sustainable forms of agriculture. GE organisms are a threat to crop diversity.

Crop genetic diversity is critical to the continuing development of varieties resistant to new pests, diseases, and changing climatic and environmental conditions. In this way, diversity is essential for global food security. The lack of genetic diversity, in fact, can be linked to many of the major crop epidemics in human history. As recently as 1970 the maize crop in the southern US was attacked by a disease called Southern corn leaf blight. Because of genetic uniformity among the maize varieties grown across the US, the loss to this disease was great - in total 15 percent of its harvest - at the time worth around US$1 billion.

According to botanist Jack Harlan, genetic diversity is all that "stands between us and catastrophic starvation on a scale we can not imagine".

"While scientific progress on molecular biology has a great potential to increase our understanding of nature and provide new medical tools, it should not be used as justification to turn the environment into a giant genetic experiment by commercial interests. The biodiversity and environmental integrity of the world's food supply is too important to our survival to be put at risk."

Nearly every independent animal feeding safety study on GM foods shows adverse or unexplained effects. But we were not supposed to know about these problems either%u2014the biotech industry works overtime to try to hide them. Industry studies described above, for example, are neither peer-reviewed nor published. It took lawsuits to make two of them available. And adverse findings by independent scientists are often suppressed, ignored, or denied. Moreover, researchers that discover problems from GM foods have been fired, stripped of responsibilities, deprived of tenure, and even threatened. The myth that GM crops are the same safe food we have always eaten continues to circulate

With the overwhelming evidence of problems since their introduction in 1996, however, it is likely that GM foods are contributing to the deterioration of health . Without human clinical trials or post-marketing surveillance, we can not tell which worsening health statistic may be due to these foods. But we also we can not afford to wait until we find out. GM foods must be removed from our diet immediately."

http://www.seedsofdeception.com/Public/MediaCenter/Videos/index.cfm

http://www.bangmfood.org/images/stories/10reasons.pdf

http://www.globalpolicy.org/social-and-economic-policy/international-trade-and-development-1-57/genetically-modified-organisms.html

http://www.gmfreeireland.org/news/index.php

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/02/india-defies-monsanto-says-no-to-gmo-crops.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oju86YIOOLI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsK3V04LAvw

http://www.organicworks.com.au/GMHealthrisks.htm


http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/switzerland-GMO-moratorium090310

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/releases/briefing-romania-a-playgrou