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Subject:
RE:Frankenfood-Sgt Obvious-Agriculture
Worcester
4/22/2004 9:16:45 AM
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| You mean "foie gras"? Delicious. But best not to think about the process.
I believe the GM debate is in two parts - (1) is GM food safe? Well we've had hybrids for centuries, but they were evolutions over long time cyles and are proven safe. The problem with GM is that you can draw parallels with the older strains but no one has lived on the stuff long enough to know. Organic is safer if you can afford it.
(2) Economic control. The REAL issue. One of the earliest African objections to GM was against the ADM manufactured corn strains which could not be re-seeded; the African farmers had to buy new seed each year. This dependency makes a travesty of self-sufficiency - the ancient idea of seed corn - and to their credit ADM have withdrawn this line.
Agricultural subsidies are the cause of much misery. Both the EU and the US pay massive subsidies to farmers for domestic reasons - the current US administration has just provided the largest increase in over two decades. These surpluses are then dumped on third world markets as "aid" (aren't we generous!) depressing prices to the point where many local farmers sinply can't compete. Remember how angry we get at steel dumping; well we do it in agriculture. Not only do we deliberately suppress indigenous agriculture but the health issues are profound - fow example, milk dumping is often delivered in the form of milk powder which is then mixed with local water.
To prove the economic points, one of the few countries which does commercially engage in free trade in third world agriculture is strangely, the UK. Because their 4 major supermarket chains have 65% retail dominance they can dictate a lot of free market sourcing - as a result over 2/3 of chickens originate in southeast Asia, some 1/4 of green vegetables from west Africa, 1/4 of beef from Botswana.
It is primarily the US (we, the champions of the free market!) and the core EU who insist on arcane domestic subsidies and then dump the excess on the third world in the name of "charity". If there were a free market our food would be cheaper, our taxes would be lower and many in the third world would be less poor. But then again some knee jerk parochial would worry about being "food independent" (like energy).
So before you blame the EU, we are equally at fault.
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