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The questionable future of genetic engineering

By Jeremy Tager - posted Thursday, 18 August 2005


Perhaps the claim is about the mythical increases in yield and reduced herbicide use of GE canola. Overseas evidence indicates the opposite is true. And where is the Australian data? Where is the data from seven years of trials conducted on GE canola in Australia? Buried as “commercial in confidence”. Does anyone really believe that Australian trial data wouldn’t be released if it showed any benefits at all?

How often do Greenpeace and other organisations have to call for tabling of data before it becomes clear that there is no data to support claims of increased yield or reduced herbicide use on herbicide tolerant GE crops?

Greenpeace has taken a pro-active and entirely precautionary approach to GE agriculture. We do not accept that GE agriculture or foods are the inevitable diet of Australia and we do not accept that the industry claims are scientific or would ever hold up to independent scrutiny.

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Marohasy’s argument regarding GE foods is even less tenable. Marohasy relies on two arguments: a number of foods on our supermarket shelves already contain genetically engineered ingredients and therefore we should accept their presence as inevitable and secondly that supermarket chains have claimed that their sales are not affected by GE labels.

Perhaps we can find common ground here. If a GE labels won’t affect sales, then perhaps the IPA, Woolies and Coles will support full labelling. All products containing GE must be labelled as such.

Those organisations won’t ever support such a step, because the food industry knows full well that GE labels can only harm their sales and will never, ever improve them.

The lack of decent labelling of GE foods has been the reason the Greenpeace True Food Guide has been so important and successful. That guide allows shoppers to make informed choices about the foods that they eat. The True Food Guide has been distributed to hundreds of thousands of consumers who care about what they eat and who are part of the large majority that prefers not to eat GE.

Perhaps Ms Marohasy should have attended the conference in Adelaide last week at which the CEO of George Weston Technologies made it clear that every time there is an incident with genetically engineered food or contamination in Australia, their switchboard lights up. Or perhaps speak with the miller in New South Wales who said he received a “mountain” of emails from concerned overseas buyers after the Topas scandal was first revealed.

Or perhaps speak with the Australian Barley Board, which indicated at that same conference that our biggest market for canola, Japan, only buys from Australia because we’re GE free.

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There is nothing inevitable about GE foods and crops in our lives. After over 30 years of marketing and hyping GE, more than 95 per cent of all GE crops are still grown in just 5 countries - and it remains a miniscule portion of our food production. And the predictions of the GE industry that consumer resistance would disappear have been shown, like most industry claims relating to GE, to be completely wrong.

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For sources or data on claims made in this article please contact Jeremy.Tager@au.greenpeace.org, Greenpeace GE campaigner, Ph: 07 3892 7538.



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About the Author

Jeremy Tager is the Greenpeace GE campaigner.

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