The European Parliament on Tuesday backed plans to let member states choose whether to ban the cultivation of genetically-modified (GM) crops on their territory, giving a detailed list of grounds on which such bans could be imposed.

Tutkimuksissa myrkyn on todettu aiheuttavan laboratorioeläimille sikiövaurioita ja keskenmenoja. Raportin mukaan viranomaiset ovat kuitenkin salanneet tietoja aineen terveysvaikutuksista. Saksan elintarvikeviranomainen väitti viime vuonna, että myrkyn yhteyttä sikiövaurioihin ei ole todettu. Roundup-kasvimyrkkyä valmistava Monsanto ajaa parhaillaan EU-parlamentissa läpi geenimuunnellun viljan kasvattamista sallivaa lainsäädäntöä.

Emeritus Professor Don Huber from Perdue University says his research shows that animals fed on GM corn or soybeans may suffer serious health problems due to the pathogen. “They’re finding anywhere from 20 per cent to as much as 55 per cent of those [animals] will miscarriage or spontaneously abort,” he said. “It will kill a chicken embryo for instance in 24-48 hours.” Professor Huber says it isn’t clear yet whether it is the GM crops or the use of the pesticide glyphosate that causes the pathogen. But he says his research shows both the pesticide and the GM crops also reduce the ability of plants to absorb nutrients from the soil that are necessary for animal health.

Australia’s pistachio farmers expected a bumper crop this year. Instead they had a harvest of horrors, with nuts blackened by a fungus that had never before caused an outbreak in pistachios.,, What the disease means for the future of Australia’s pistachio farmers remains to be seen, but for the rest of the world it’s yet another cautionary example of fragility in modern agriculture… “The wide cultivation of genetically uniform plant populations fosters rapid evolution among the pathogens,”… “Not only do the genetically uniform crops provide no physical barrier to between-plant dispersal of pathogens, they provide a large population of plants upon which enormous populations of the pathogen develop.”

Raportin mukaan tavitsemme GMO-maanviljelyä ja kloonattuja lihasikoja koska ihmiset eivät varmaankaan suostu vähentämään lihan syömistä. - “The Indian food analyst Devinder Sharma said the report was limited in vision and anti-poor. “The world already produces enough food for 11.5 billion people. Beddington and the government call for radical change but they really want to intensify existing policies. This is just a very clever camouflage for policies which have failed the poor around the world.”

Olivier de Schutter, the UN special rapporteur for the right to food, said that hunger was a political question, not just a technical one…He urged G20 countries to address food speculation by banks and financiers, stop the “land grab” of farmland in Africa and elsewhere by rich countries and help countries build food reserves and avoid spikes in food prices.

The US embassy in Paris advised Washington to start a military-style trade war against any European Union country which opposed genetically modified (GM) crops, newly released WikiLeaks cables show…US diplomats around the world are found to have pushed GM crops as a strategic government and commercial imperative.