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Mr. Gray: I am grateful to the Minister for his further quotation from the POST note. Those who are interested will doubtless be able to look at it in the Library. My main point was not that it gave convincing evidence of a health risk. My goodness, if we knew for sure, as the Minister seems to suggest, that hormone-improved beef was definitely bad for human beings, no Government of any complexion in any country would ever allow it to be sold. At no stage have I suggested that it is definitely bad. All I am saying is that the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology says that it might be dangerous and other scientists say that it might not be. There is a scientific debate about it. Almost nobody in their right mind--with the honourable exception of the Government--would suggest that beef on the bone was harmful, whereas many eminent scientists suggest that hormonally modified beef might be.
More importantly, British beef farmers are facing the worst time that they have ever had. They are unable to sell their beef overseas because of the ineptitude and
inadequacy of the Minister of State at MAFF. Our beef farmers cannot export perfectly healthy beef, but the Government are saying that we should allow the Americans to export beef that many scientists believe could be very damaging to human health. There is something wrong with that. On behalf of the beef farmers of north Wiltshire, I find that worrying and disturbing. I am sure that they will have some powerful comments to make in the aftermath of the debate.
Leaving aside the medical and scientific discussion, the Conservative party is wholeheartedly committed to free trade, in contrast with the Liberal Democrats, and perhaps the Labour party, given some of the comments that we have heard this afternoon. Freer trade in Britain means solving the disputes over beef and bananas. It means foreseeing disputes such as that over air freight. It means using influence in Brussels and Washington, not just talking about it, setting up a committee or putting out a press release. Too often, the Labour Government's approach to international problems is to do whatever will look good in the papers tomorrow. It is not about winning the battle of spin, but about addressing the difficult questions, not just in public, but behind the scenes. That requires careful, quiet diplomacy over long periods to solve disputes, not the headline-grabbing, "I'll have a go at them" approach to which the Government too often resort.
Mr. Colin Breed (South-East Cornwall):
The motion and the Government amendment refer to the interests of the developing world. I should like to focus on that. Less-developed countries are just as vulnerable to the new biotechnology and to the way in which WTO rules will be interpreted. Genetically modified food has been heralded by many as an answer to famine and starvation in the developing world. It is said that enormous quantities of food from genetically modified crops could be produced in areas that are currently infertile. Apparently, drought-resistant crops could allow farmers in some of the poorest areas of the world to grow food to sustain themselves.
That is laudable and I am sure that we all wish that it were true. However, I am sure that many hon. Members agree that some GM crops come at a dangerously high price. First, GM food is produced by a relatively small number of multinational companies. Ten companies control around 85 per cent. of the global agrochemical market. Secondly, the so-called terminator or suicide seed technology involves a gene that makes seeds infertile. In a GM world, farmers could no longer store the seed produced by the previous season's crops, but would have to buy new seed each year. That is clearly to the advantage only of the seed producers and the companies that own the patents and will increase the costs to poor farmers in third-world countries. Thirdly, GM crops are designed mainly for the intensive farming prevalentin western agriculture, which is inappropriate forthe delicately balanced ecosystems of less-developed countries.
One of the other so-called advantages claimed for GM food is that it will reduce the world's damaging over-reliance on pesticides, allowing pest-resistant crops to flourish. However, far from relieving agriculture of the need to pour a dangerous cocktail of chemicals on to the crops, genetic engineering is tailored to reinforce farmers' dependence on certain chemical herbicides and fertilisers. GM crops are designed to work in tandem with specified pesticides, having the pest-resistant gene as part of the process of genetic modification. When the field is sprayed, all the weeds will die, leaving only the crop. The farmers have to buy not only the seed, but also the relevant pesticide. For example, Monsanto crops will be resistant only with Monsanto pesticides. That probably comes as little surprise to any of us.
The proponents of GM food accuse those of us who may be more cautious of denying food to the hungry. However, there is a growing fear that the sated and wealthy are making money out of the hungry and poor, then threatening action through WTO rules to enforce the largely unproven and potentially dangerous science on unsuspecting third-world farmers. They argue that genetically engineered crops will feed the growing third-world population. However, this week's Christian Aid report on GM food and the developing world showed that to be a false and deeply misleading claim. There is already enough food to feed everybody in the world. According to the UN world food programme, there is one and a half times the amount required, but one seventh of the world's population--around 800 million people--still go hungry.
Our supermarket shelves are stacked high with exotic products of all shapes and sizes from all parts of the world. Certainly, there is no shortage of food in south-east Cornwall--or, I suspect, in any other constituency in the country. There seems to be no problem in bringing food from far-flung places to our supermarket shelves. Yet there seems to be a distinct problem the other way round.
In 1984, at the time of the Ethiopian famine, some of the prime agricultural land in the Horn of Africa was used to produce linseed cake, cottonseed cake and rapeseed meal for export to Britain and other European nations as feed for livestock. That was clearly ridiculous and, as a result of the famine, the EU--including this country--pumped millions of pounds of aid back into Ethiopia.
The west has enough food to feed itself many times over. The problem is not quantity, or even quality, but distribution--getting the food that can be produced in ordinary circumstances to those who need it. Unfortunately, there appears to be very little profit in distribution, so few commercial concerns are interested and little interest is shown by Governments in tackling properly the problem of distribution.
The very fact that those poor countries cannot afford the food to feed themselves adequately will not be changed by the introduction of genetically modified crops. If anything, it will widen the gap between the well-fed haves and the hungry have-nots. The developed countries can afford expensive biotechnological crops in combination with equally complex pesticides, whereas the developing world simply cannot.
The Ethiopian representative to the bio-safety protocol negotiations, which were part of the convention on biological diversity, said:
The answer to the problem of feeding the burgeoning world population is not GM foods, or increased fertiliser use. Green techniques can adequately cope with the increased demand. For instance, in southern Brazil, 250,000 farmers using green techniques doubled both maize and wheat yields, while 200,000 farmers in Kenya increased productivity by 50 per cent. However, in India, to increase the grain yield by four times since 1950, fertiliser use has had to increase more than 200 times over.
GM crops are being designed for western intensive farming techniques, and the impact on the delicately balanced environment of the scale of factory farming needed to justify GM crops is immense. For instance, Jules Pretty of Essex university cites evidence from20 countries of 2 million households farming 5 million hectares in a more sustainable manner. They all use techniques that have stood the test of time, such as multi-cropping, reduced chemical input, local seed and using the knowledge, skill and experience of local farming. Those techniques are sustainable and suit the local environment.
The introduction of single GM crops would necessitate immediately the greater use of fertilisers and pesticides, damaging the delicately balanced local ecosystem. Many farmers in poorer countries will be encouraged to grow cash crops. That is happening already, with supermarkets contracting growers in third-world countries to grow vegetables such as carrots--using cheap labour and huge amounts of water--and encouraging them to use GM seed where there are no restrictions.
Those crops are not available or eaten by the indigenous population and contribute nothing to relieving hunger there. They only enable the foreign currency earned to pay the interest on the country's foreign debt, which is unsustainable, both environmentally and economically.
A combination of aggressive seed producers and the purchasing power of western supermarkets is forcing GM crops on to less-developed countries, causing potentially catastrophic damage. With ever-growing public apprehension, particularly in Europe, more attention will be given to those less-developed countries. All of this is being reinforced by so-called free trade obligations under WTO rules, which I believe serve more the greed of western commercial interests than balancing and promoting proper trade which is fair and environmentally sustainable.
It has been argued that genetic modification is merely an extension of selective breeding, something that has been used for thousands of years to influence which genes are passed between generations of plants and animals. However, the advent of GM crops is completely different. There is no longer a DNA river flowing and branching through geological time with steep banks confining each
species. GM crops are the bursting of those river banks, with such absurdities as tobacco modified with genes from the Chinese hamster. The DNA river is beginning to flood. Only prompt action and rigorous scientific testing can prevent as yet unknown damage occurring to the animals and plants of the world.
"There are still hungry people in Ethiopia, but they are hungry because they have no money, no longer because there is no food to buy."
13 May 1999 : Column 467
The biotechnology industry's claim that its research is motivated by a need to feed the hungry is clearly unsubstantiated. Few of the foods so far produced are likely to benefit poorer people in the developing world.
One of the main genetically engineered crops grown commercially in the United States is soya. Some 90 per cent. to 95 per cent. of the soya bean harvest and 60 per cent. of traded maize are consumed not by people but by livestock. The argument by multinationals in favour of GM foods--that they eliminate hunger--is simply wrong.
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