Posted on 19-9-2002
GE
Economic Disaster
A damning new report from the UK Soil Association demonstrates
that GE food
crops have been a practical and economic disaster, estimated
to have cost
the US economy at least NZ$ 25 billion between 1999 and 2001
in farm
subsidies, lower crop prices, loss of major export markets and
product
recalls. UK Soil Association director, Patrick Holden said on
National
Radio this morning that: “the technical difficulties of containment
look to
be nearly insuperable and the [farmers] right of choice has
been
insidiously eroded by the introduction of GM crops."
According to the report: Widespread GE contamination at all
levels of the
food and farming industry has severely disrupted GE-free production,
destroyed trade and undermined the competitiveness of North
American
agriculture overall. GE crops have also increased the reliance
of farmers
on herbicides and led to many legal challenges. Farmers are
not achieving
the higher profits promised as markets for GE food collapse.
The extent of
problems with GE crops has compelled over 200 groups representing
farmers
and the organic sector in the USA and Canada to call for a moratorium
on
the introduction of the next major proposed GE food crop, GE
wheat. The new
report states that: “In North America farmer ignorance was one
of the
biotechnology industry’s greatest marketing assets, explaining
to a large
extent how GE crops were introduced there in the first place.”
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