World According to Monsanto, pt 5, Consensus

Seed magazine hosts a discussion of GMO crops, with three cheerleaders, plus Tom Philpott and Raj Patel, who do a good job poking holes in the opposition case. Key takeaways:

- There isn't scientific consensus.

- There hasn't been adequate safety testing.

- Other promising methods of improving farming get starved of funding in favor of profitable GMO research that benefits private companies.

From Philpott:

... Thus in the first-ever multi-generational study of the effects of GMO food, evidence of serious reproductive trouble comes to light: reduced birth weight and fertility. If the reproductive system can be viewed as a proxy for broad health, then the Austrian study raises serious questions about the effects of consuming foods derived from transgenic crops—i.e., upwards of 70 percent of the products found on U.S. supermarket shelves.

... The Austrian results raise an obvious question: why did the first multigenerational study of the health effects of GMOs emerge more than a decade after their broad introduction in the United States?

... A recent event reported by the New York Times illustrates the lack of independence—and thus, arguably, rigor—that surrounds too much GMO research. A group of 23 US scientists signed a letter to the EPA declaring that, “No truly independent research [on GMOs] can be legally conducted on many critical questions.” The Times reported that because of draconian intellectual property laws, scientists can’t grow GMO crops for research purposes without gaining permission from the corporations that own the germplasm—permission which is sometimes denied or granted only on condition that the companies can review findings before publication.

Stunningly, “The researchers … withheld their names [from the EPA letter] because they feared being cut off from research by the companies,” The Times reports. So this is the sort of scientific consensus around GMOs that environmentalist should bow to—one literally based on fear among tenured faculty? ...

Philpott also points to the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), which ends up recommending an approach that leans heavily towards the agroecological and encourages crop diversification, while warning against the effects of restrictive intellectual property laws and the search for technological magic bullets. That's the international scientific consensus on agriculture, where they say outright that much of what's being done right now in agriculture isn't sustainable.

And of course, there's the consensus among US government regulatory agencies on the safety of genetically modified foods, because that government is riddled with former Monsanto employees who don't require all GMO crops to be submitted for independent safety testing. Or, at least, if government employees think otherwise, they're not going to be allowed to say so without a lawsuit.