UK’s Two Main Political Parties Back GMOs And The US Agenda

Last week, the two main political parties in the United Kingdom, Tories and Labour, declared their support for genetically modified (GM) food crops, a move that surprised and dismayed many. However, the decision should not have come as a shock, as Professor Maurice Moloney, director of Rothamstead Research in the UK – the world’s largest and oldest agricultural research station – has long argued for the use of GM technology to tackle global food security and environmental protection challenges. Professor Moloney is best known for developing the world’s first transgenic oilseeds and the genetically modified crop, RoundUp Ready(R) Canola, which is grown in Australia. This system was designed to require the exclusive use of Monsanto’s herbicide, and Monsanto is widely regarded as the ‘Mother of agricultural biotechnology’, with nearly 250 million GM RoundUp Ready acres worldwide. In light of Moloney’s arguments, politicians from both parties last week declared that GM food crops could help to significantly increase food production to meet the needs of a growing population.

Last year, opposition to genetically modified foods surged across the UK and Europe. Twenty-seven EU states rejected a commission proposal to lift import restrictions on animal foodstuffs containing traces of GM crops, up to a certain threshold, due to opposition from France and Poland. In a confidential communication, released by WikiLeaks in 2010, the US Ambassador to France at that time, Craig Roberts Stapleton, recommended creating a list if the EU continued to ban biotech seeds. 

Agriculture Minister, Jim Paice, expressed the UK’s desire for the EU to agree to lift restrictions on trials and sale of GM products, so countries like the UK could “do it’s own thing” and “use this technology where appropriate”. 

David Ehrenfield, Professor of Biology at Rutgers University, commented that “Genetic Engineering is often justified as a human technology, one that feeds more people with better food. Nothing could be further from the truth. With very few exceptions, the whole point of genetic engineering is to increase sales of chemicals and bio-engineered products to dependent farmers”. 

Data from the US shows that the widespread adoption of RoundUp Ready crops combined with the emergence of glyphosate-resistant weeds has driven a more than 15-fold increase in the use of glyphosate on major field crops from 1994 to 2005. 

Scientists worldwide are concerned that the cultivation of GMOs will accelerate the loss of the world’s food sovereignty and contaminate vital native strains.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *