Activist Groups’ Long History of Opposing Life-Sustaining Bioengineered Foods
We developed our genetically engineered salmon as a way to address the environmental limitations and tradeoffs of traditional offshore aquaculture.
Those older methods have the potential to pollute and contaminate natural waterways, and can pose a threat to wild fish populations. The safe, sustainable, and healthy land-based salmon we spent 30 years developing answers all of those challenges..
But if you thought that would put us on the same side as the environmental activist groups who had long advocated for land-based farms as the best way to eliminate downside risks of legacy methods, you’d be sadly mistaken.
Because many of these same well-funded “food safety” NGOs and fringe activist groups have done an about-face, and launched attacks on our product rooted in unfounded fearmongering on the safety of bioengineered foods.
Even worse, those attacks mimic a broader assault on GM foods that have the potential to reduce hunger and deprivation and feed a rapidly growing world. Thankfully, an increasing number of observers—from journalists and activists to scientists and regulators—are recognizing those attacks for what they are: anti-science, anti-progress, and anti-human.
Below are just a few examples from recent years of coverage recognizing the horrible costs of blind anti-bioengineering activism:
Needed GMO technology to help citizens in Third World countries is being thwarted by activist groups in First World countries who are anti-GMO, said Alison Van Eenennaam, a UCANR Cooperative Extension Specialist focused on Animal Genomics at UC Davis.
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“I just want to use the best tool that is available. But it doesn’t make sense to take some tools off the table for no reason, and I think that’s what’s happening around the debate of genetic engineering,” she said.
And the use of GMO crops in a third world country has dramatically decreased the use of pesticides, which should be celebrated by activists.
“About 90 percent of the farmers growing GMO crops are on small acreage producers in the developing world… And the dramatic decrease of insecticide use resulting from that—well environmentalist should be singing this from the rooftops,” Van Eenennaam said.
“GMO Technology Can Help Prevent Starvation” California Ag Today
Biotech crops are already well-established around the world. The U.S. has approved about 100 genetically modified plants for use in agriculture. Virtually all cotton in India, a vital economic staple for the country, is GM, as is 90 percent of cotton grown in China. Four out of every five harvested soybeans on earth are genetically modified. Corn worldwide is 35 percent genetically modified. Bangladesh is considering a GM eggplant that could double its harvest by protecting it from worms. Food writer Mark Bittman recently pointed out that we've been happily eating harmless genetically modified, virus-resistant papayas for years, and that's Mr. Natural talking.”
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This genetic work has not just found detractors but also aroused fierce partisans. Take Golden Rice, for example. It's basic rice, but modified to produce its own vitamin A, potentially saving up to 2.8 million children a year from blindness and a million of them from death. Yet it sits in labs, unused. The notion of GMOs has spooked environmental … which [have] resisted GMOs with violent action, including destroying an experimental Golden Rice field last year in the Philippines. This despite the fact that Golden Rice is being offered to the world by a nonprofit, with no commercial stipulations, and is likely to save many lives.
The scientific consensus for the safety of GMOs is overwhelming. A recent Pew poll found that 88 percent of U.S. scientists think GMO technology is harmless. By contrast, only 33 percent of civilians agreed. A recent 7-1 U.S. Supreme Court decision concurred that genetically modified alfalfa is safe. The USDA, after arduous review, has allowed genetically modified sugar beets. Several independent studies so far have tested the effects of varieties of genetically modified crops on animals. In 2012, a meta-analysis of 12 long-term studies and 12 multigenerational studies was published in Food and Chemical Toxicology; it concluded "that GM plants are nutritionally equivalent to their non-GM counterparts and can be safely used in food and feed." And according to the independent organization Biofortified, more than a hundred such studies have been performed, with no harmful results found.
“GMO Scientists Could Save the World From Hunger, If We Let Them” Newsweek
[A]ctivists … claim that GMOs are harmful to health, farmers and the environment.
This is tragically wrong. In reality, GMOs can save millions of lives. It’s the environmentalists who are doing real harm.
The best example of this is Golden Rice, a miracle grain enhanced with Vitamin A-producing beta-carotene.
Developed 15 years ago, it was considered a breakthrough in bio-fortified technology. Today, 6,000 children will die from Vitamin A deficiency. Each year, 500,000 people, mostly children, lose their sight; half of them will die within a year of becoming blind. Altogether, over 2 million people every year are victims of Vitamin A deficiency.
Many of those lives could be saved if Golden Rice were in their diets.
But the ongoing opposition of anti-GMO activist groups and their lavish scare campaign with its combined global war chest estimated to exceed $500 million a year have kept Golden Rice off the global market [by] deploying highly sophisticated PR and un-scientific scaremongering…
“How Neil Young, Greenpeace work to starve the world’s poor” The Right Hon. Owen Paterson, MP and former UK secretary of state for the environment, food and rural affairs
If you fear genetically modified food, you may have Mark Lynas to thank. By his own reckoning, British environmentalist helped spur the anti-GMO movement in the mid-‘90s, arguing as recently at 2008 that big corporations’ selfish greed would threaten the health of both people and the Earth. Thanks to the efforts of Lynas and people like him, governments around the world—especially in Western Europe, Asia, and Africa—have hobbled GM research, and NGOs like Greenpeace have spurned donations of genetically modified foods.
But Lynas has changed his mind—and he’s not being quiet about it. On Thursday at the Oxford Farming Conference, Lynas delivered a blunt address: He got GMOs wrong. According to the version of his remarks posted online (as yet, there’s no video or transcript of the actual delivery), he opened with a bang:
I want to start with some apologies. For the record, here and upfront, I apologise for having spent several years ripping up GM crops. I am also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid 1990s, and that I thereby assisted in demonising an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment.
As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter-productive path. I now regret it completely.
So I guess you’ll be wondering—what happened between 1995 and now that made me not only change my mind but come here and admit it? Well, the answer is fairly simple: I discovered science, and in the process I hope I became a better environmentalist.
“Leading Environmental Activist’s Blunt Confession: I Was Completely Wrong To Oppose GMOs” Slate
[O]pponents have waged effective campaigns against GM technology based on misinformation and scaremongering.
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This is not to say that there are no risks associated with the introduction of GM varieties, or that regulation is not needed. The release of any new variety, GM or otherwise, entails risk that must be assessed and managed accordingly.
But what typically determines whether a GM crop is approved for release in Africa is not a balanced, independent assessment of risks and benefits, but a political judgment shaped by distrust and suspicion of the technology.
Politicians are reluctant to progress biosafety legislation or take decisions towards the release of GM varieties. Even when a functioning biosafety regime exists, regulatory decisions may be unpredictable and subject to political interference.
“GM scaremongering in Africa is disarming the fight against poverty” The Guardian