AR-News: (UK) Starved of the truth

[Animalara2003 at aol.com]

Biotech firms are out to corner the market, so they have to persuade us 
something else is at stake 

George Monbiot 
Tuesday March 9, 2004
The Guardian 

The question is as simple as this: do you want a few corporations to 
monopolise the global food supply? If the answer is yes, you should welcome the 
announcement that the government is expected to make today that the commercial 
planting of a genetically modified (GM) crop in Britain can go ahead. If the answer 
is no, you should regret it. The principal promotional effort of the genetic 
engineering industry is to distract us from this question. 
GM technology permits companies to ensure that everything we eat is owned by 
them. They can patent the seeds and the processes that give rise to them. They 
can make sure that crops can't be grown without their patented chemicals. 
They can prevent seeds from reproducing themselves. By buying up competing seed 
companies and closing them down, they can capture the food market, the biggest 
and most diverse market of all. 
No one in her right mind would welcome this, so the corporations must 
persuade us to focus on something else. At first they talked of enhancing consumer 
choice, but when the carrot failed, they switched to the stick. Now we are told 
that unless we support the deployment of GM crops in Britain, our science base 
will collapse. And that, by refusing to eat GM products in Europe, we are 
threatening the developing world with starvation. Both arguments are, shall we 
say, imaginative; but in public relations, cogency counts for little. All that 
matters is that you spin the discussion out for long enough to achieve the 
necessary result. And that means recruiting eminent figures to make the case on 
your behalf. 





full story:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1165076,00.html 
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