AFP: France defends ban on strain of GM corn - EU must not let itself be intimidated by Anglo-American agribusiness/biotechnology giants

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France defends ban on strain of GM corn- EU must not let itself be intimidated by Anglo-American agribusiness/biotechnology giants

French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Saturday defended banning a strain of GM corn, as a high-profile activist ended a hunger strike in response and farmers complained politics had trumped science. "It does not mean that France does not participate in GMO research. It does not mean that there will not be GMOs in the future," Sarkozy said at a meeting of his Union for a Popular Movement party (UMP), referring to genetically modified organisms. "It simply means that with the principle of precaution at stake, I am making a major political decision to carry our country to the forefront of the debate on the environment."

Opponents of GMOs -- a fiercely contested issue in Europe -- welcomed the French government's decision, announced late Friday, to invoke a European Union procedure to bar the Monsanto 810 maize. France's Provisional High Authority on GM Organisms on Wednesday pointed to what it described as "a certain number of new scientific facts relating to a negative impact on flora and fauna". Chairman Jean-Francois Le Grand, who also holds a seat in the Senate, said evidence had emerged that Mon 810 had an effect on insects, a species of earthworm and micro-organisms. There was also concern that wind-born pollen from Mon 810 could travel further than previously thought, possibly hundreds of miles (kilometres), said Le Grand.

Note EU-Digest: This is positive action by France's President Sarkozy, as a first step to ban all genetically manipulated foods and agricultural products in the EU. Research has shown the dangers of these manipulated products, like the Monsanto 810 Maize, to the environment and possibly also humans. Introducing foreign DNA into plants to create genetically modified organisms is also not without risks. London Institute of Science and Society chief biologist, Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, says the process is imprecise. "It is uncontrollable and unreliable, and typically ends up damaging and scrambling the host genome with entirely unpredictable consequences that might unleash a deadly un-recallable Andromeda Strain". It has also been reported that there are indications that genetically manipulated agricultural food products are alarmingly increasing childhood food allergies.

In the U.S. 90 percent of the soybean crop, 85 percent of cotton and 50 percent of field corn are bio-engineered or genetically manipulated organisms (GMO). Worldwide, 60 percent of soybeans and 28 percent of cotton are GMO varieties. Monsanto and other GMO giants got unregulated free rein in the 1980s and especially after George Bush became president in 1989. His administration opened "the GMO Pandora's Box" in such a way that no "unnecessary regulations" would hamper them. Thereafter, not one single new regulatory law governing biotech or GMO products was passed in the US, despite all the risks and possible dangers to health."

This issue deserves far more scrutiny in the EU than it has been getting and the EU must not let itself be intimidated and overruled by well funded Anglo-American agribusiness/biotechnology giants public relations campaigns and pressure groups.