SHOCK: GM crops are good for you and the planet, reckon boffins
Andrew Orlowski
n a rebuke to the EU, and environmental activists worldwide, the biggest scientific metastudy yet conducted of genetically modified foods concludes they’re good for human health and the environment.
The National Academics of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, an advisory body of scientists, finds no evidence of risks over conventional crops, and huge benefits in the shape of increased yields in poor countries, and healthier crops. Nor did the boffins find any evidence of the catastrophic environmental risks touted by scaremonger green groups.
More resilient GM foods reduce reliance on pesticides.
It’s an implicit rebuke to European policy. Between 1998 and 2004, the EU imposed a blanket ban on the sale of GM foods.
Since then, it’s merely tried to strangle them by heavy regulation, giving member states the right to impose their own obstacles in the shape of temporary bans (so much for single market harmonisation). France was fined in 2011 after the European Court of Justice found no evidence justifying its own ban.
In the UK, an unholy alliance of the yoga-practising classes; the Prince of Wales, who appears to advocate a medieval approach to agriculture; and Daily Mail articles helped create a wave of fear against biotech. Paul Dacre’s “Frankenfoods” campaign, and the media’s promotion of work by the now discredited scientist Árpád Pusztai were instrumental in fuelling revulsion against GM crops. The UK is still outgunned in Brussels.
Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore now promotes vitamin A-fortified blindness-fighting Golden Rice, which Western NGOs are attempting to restrict in the countries that most need it.®
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/18/academies_gm_foods_ok/