MONSANTO CORPORATION - Page 5
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March 8, 1998 by Bill Lambrecht, Post-Dispatch SHANAGARRY, Ireland -- With her best-selling cookbooks and her television show, Darina Allen is Ireland's Julia Child, with a dash of Martha Stewart thrown in. But down at her Ballymaloe Cookery School in County Cork, Allen's cheery outlook is darkened these days by something other than fallen souffles. Allen recently became Ireland's most prominent voice to speak out against St. Louis-based Monsanto Co.'s experiments with genetically engineered sugar beets. After seeing its first Irish experiment sabotaged, Monsanto is asking for approval for expanded field tests in a few weeks. No other company has sought similar authority. By U.S. standards, Monsanto's experiment in herbicide-tolerance is ordinary. But Monsanto and its rivals in the genetic engineering trade are finding that Europe is not the United States when it comes to public acceptance of genetic engineering. In picking a test plot near Darina Allen's school and organic farm, Monsanto poured fuel on an Irish controversy that packs far more explosiveness than debates in the United States. Allen, a member of Ireland's governmental Food Safety Authority, tells her followers to buy fresh, natural foods for the best dishes and good health. To her, natural does not mean "fiddling around with genes," as she put it. "I'm not a romantic; I'm a realist, a country girl," Allen, 49, said at her farm last week. "In my simplistic way of looking at things, you can't change nature and continue down this path of intensive farming without paying a price." Allen's opinion represents a minority in Ireland. But it is a vocal, resolute and occasionally militant minority that is slowing the spread of a technology to Europe. The United States has two seasons of genetically modified soybeans and cotton behind it and this spring will mark the first plantings of bioengineered corn. Americans pay scant attention to either field tests or to the source of what they eat. But in Europe, gene-splicing is meeting the food supply amid concerns both about the science and the ethics of manipulating the fabric of living things. So far, the vast European market has been a success for genetic engineering mainly with pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. But agriculture in Europe offers Monsanto and other biotechnology companies the potential of hundreds of millions of dollars in profits in the coming years if they overcome regulatory hurdles and win public acceptance. Regulatory barriers in Europe have begun to melt; last month, a science advisory committee of the 15-member European Commission recommended approval of four modified crops. Imported foods processed with altered ingredients are largely permitted. This spring, France will be host to Europe's first commercial planting of an altered crop if all goes well in a plan by Novartis, Monsanto's Swiss competitor, to sow a modified corn. Yet every European nation is embroiled in public debates over testing gene-altered products, labeling them and even banning them outright. The discussion is especially lively in Ireland. Unlike the United States, the Irish media carry stories almost daily about what are known in Europe as GMOs - genetically modified organisms. An international conference in Dublin that opens Wednesday is the third public forum on the subject in two weeks. Last week, an association of Irish retailers announced a voluntary plan to label products that contain genetically modified soya and corn imported from the United States. In Ireland, Monsanto is deeply involved in political skirmishes and public relations campaigns. When the Irish debate intensified last year, Monsanto flew a half-dozen Irish journalists to the United States for sessions in St. Louis, Southern Illinois and Washington. For a conference at Trinity College in Dublin this week, Monsanto is picking up the tab for some of the travel costs. The lineup of participants says something about Ireland's debate: It includes Ireland's prime minister, Scottish sheep cloner Ian Wilmut and an assistant prosecutor in the O. J. Simpson trial. |
Proof of Monsanto's Evil Is Readily Available All Over The Web - Spread Out . .
So I Am Providing This Dedicated Site To Bring It All Together.
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