Saturday, October 12

Why We Cannot Gamble On Genetically Modified Foods

It is nevertheless also important to recall the many instances where for-profit scientific breakthroughs have brought humanity dangerous products marketed by those with financial interests in them as silver bullets to our many problems.

Think asbestos, think DDT, think plastics and hundreds of other products. Think also of such disasters as Bhopal, Chernobyl, Fukushima and similar catastrophes whose damaging effects will last for thousands of years.

And nothing can be scarier than handing our food security to the ones whose abiding interest is to maximize their own profits, without any concern for the externalities they generate in pursuit of that narrow self-interest.

In falsely claiming no adverse health effects from GMOs (when they have done everything in their considerable power to prevent long-term studies of such effects), the GMO industry and their well-funded army of lobbyists already show they cannot be trusted. Thus the need to fully apply the precautionary principle to the introduction of their products and to put the onus on them to prove both the benefits and benign health effects of this highly-chemically impregnated ‘foods’.

Food is too critical to the survival of all living things and our environment to transfer to the control of those whose sole interest is narrow profit-maximization. Let us not commit mass suicide.

The News Times