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Foreword to UK Edition of Seeds of Deception, by Jeffrey Smith
By Michael Meacher
This is a brilliant book which combines shrewd dissection of the true nature of GM technology, a devastating critique of the health and environmental hazards of GM crops, and scarifying examples of the manipulation of both science and the media by the biotech industry.
Despite the British Government's GM Nation Debate in mid-2003, the level of understanding of GM remains alarmingly low in the UK. This book should be compulsory reading, not only for the general public, but for the decision-makers even more so who have never been exposed to systematic analysis of the problems created by GM.
What is so exciting about this book is that it is no dry text of scientific exegesis - it positively fizzes with the human drama of the cabals and conspiracies behind the scenes which have littered the history of Big Biotech in its frantic efforts to get itself accepted. It is meticulously documented and powerfully written, somewhere between a documentary and a thriller.
It reveals above all that GM is not some arcane issue about science or technology - it is ultimately about power. There are no consumer benefits from GM crops, the alleged benefits to farmers are deeply disputed, environmental and health testing has never been carried out, non-GM farmers are being put seriously at risk. So why is GM being pressed at all? The answer, set out painstakingly and frighteningly in this book, tells us a great deal about how power is exercised today - funding political parties and key individuals, networking around opinion-formers and decision-makers, and fixing strategic job swaps between the biotech industry and Government. And this is not just conjecture; plenty of examples are given which illustrate how secretive and malign these influences are.
The main area of cover-up is undoubtedly the GM effects on health. It is a staggering fact that there have been virtually no clinical or biochemical tests of the impacts of eating GM foods on human health. Jeffrey Smith sets out, like a detective story, the unravelling of the L-tryptophan fiasco, the StarLink corn allergy mishap, and the cauliflower mosaic virus promoter hazard, as well as a host of other health risks, both predicted and unpredictable.
But the kernel of the book is the commercialization of politics and the politicisation of science. For those who still believe the constitutional fantasy that governments act in accordance with their manifesto in the general interests of society, this book will come as a shocker. The exercise of power today is much more hard-nosed and ruthless, and the power-brokers are not the electorate, but Big Business. As a case study of this suborning of democratic accountability, Jeffrey Smith's account is an eye-opener. But most of all it is a call to arms, not only to prevent the contamination of the nation's food supply, but even more to tackle the poisoning of the nation's decision-making system by the under-cover wielding of economic and financial muscle and P.R. manipulativeness of Big Biotech.
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