GMO and Organic Farming Conferences
Jan/Feb. 2001
Vitality June 2001

by Helke Ferrie

The timing is astonishing. The Royal Society of Canada published its witheringly critical independent review of Canada's biotechnology policies in late January. Simultaneously, the international organic farmers' conference was held at Guelph University documenting the worldwide organic food boom. Also in January and February, the world renowned scientists who initiated the ongoing demise of the biotech industry, Arpad Pusztai and his Susan Bardocz, by unexpectedly discovering the potentially disastrous health effects of genetically engineered food plants, conducted a speaking tour through Canada. And on February 16th in Ottawa the Council of Canadians brought together activists, whistleblowers, and scientists from all over the world who brought forth huge amounts of political and health truths to a fact-thirsty crowd from all over Canada. Finally, the annual whistleblower award was given to Drs. Shiv Chopra and Margaret Haydon of Canada's Health Protection Branch for standing up to our government and saving us from genetically engineered bovine growth hormone in the milk supply.

At Guelph the CEO of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM www.ifoam.org), Bernward Geier provided the data from 105 countries showing how organic farming has grown in a mere 3 seasons from US $ 10 billion to 20 billion in revenues and by various government analyses is expected to reach US $ 100 billion by the end of this decade. The organic movement started in 1924 in Germany with the philosopher Rudolf Steiner, and fittingly the headquarters of the IFOAM are in that country. The crowds cheered when learning that every university in Germany and Switzerland, and almost all major universities in Europe, have professorships and full departments with labs and independent, public research money devoted entirely to organic farming research.

Geier stated that MacDonalds in Sweden has gone organic, Swiss Air and Lufthansa are the first airlines to be totally organic, and the German government announced in late January that its official agricultural policy is now organic and pulled the funding plug on biotech agricultural research. The European Union has introduced legislation requiring labelling, making law what is worldwide reality already: most of Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Arabia, even China, many African countries and some South American countries all require labelling already. It was also learnt that Canada is quietly (!) pouring millions into developing technologies to segregate GM crops from the real thing after having asserted for years that this could not be done. Now we have to or we are not part of the global market any more: our major export product, canola, is at zero already in just 3 years.

The courageous agricultural professor, Ann Clark, who nearly lost her job at Monsanto-money-padded Guelph University for revealing that our government has done literally no safety tests of GMO foods at all, described how organic farming is the ultimate challenge to globalization. She discussed the ecological disaster in Western Canada caused by the cross-breeding of regular rapeseed and genetically modified varieties; the hybrid is a "super-weed" and resists all known chemical - something that wasn't supposed to happen according to the tobacco science of the biotech companies.

Bruster Kneen, editor of the excellent newsletter The Ram's Horn and author of the famous Farmageddon (New Society Publishers 1999), provided wide ranging and detailed information on the efforts of biotechnology companies to gain total control in a few hands of the world's food supply - and how that control is coming unravelled through the worldwide grassroots movements demanding that "the world is our home, not the playground for corporate agendas".

In Ottawa, the Council of Canadians conference entitled, "Science and the Public Good" featured Ralph Nader who provided a magisterial overview of what activism in this area has done. (The entire conference can be enjoyed on CD ROM; call 1-800-387-7177 ext 250 for instructions). His wry humour alone is worth the internet excursion!

Arpad Puzstai and Susan Bardocs, the Hungarian scientist couple told the story of their completely unexpected discovery of the potentially horrendous health effects of genetically engineered potatoes. Their experiments were funded by the Scottish agricultural ministry at 1.6 million pounds because they could not find a single safety study on GMO foods anywhere. Not expecting anything serious, Pusztai and Bardocs were stunned when they discovered brain damage, immune system dysregulation, precancerous changes in various cells and hormone imbalances in the test animals after only short feeding trials. They went public with their findings, were fired from the Monsanto funded Rowett Institute in Edinburgh after 3 decades of impeccable research work. The British parliament, however, took note. The Pusztais testified and the UK began the revolution against GMOs that has taken hold all over the world. Now they travel the world telling their tale to more and more extremely interested and precautionary governments, researchers, and the public. Theirs is still the only safety evaluation in the scientific literature - the corporate research results are "proprietary information" and not open to scientific or government scrutiny!

The speakers from Brazil, Argentina, the US, and Asia told of their devastating experiences with corporate power undermining their governments as well as the actions of courts and individuals turning the tide everywhere. The event was crowned by the awards given to Dr. Shiv Chopra and Margret Haydon for having blown the whistle on our government's cavalier attitude to food safety. In their acceptance speeches they made it clear with grace and humour that they intended to keep blowing that whistle on behalf of Canadian and human health.

Indeed, these are the best of times for a worldwide resurgence of common sense and the worst of times for the corporate agenda of denial and deception that characterizes the push to deregulation of safety legislation and privatization of the common heritage of nature.