Less than four years ago a group of 815 scientists from 82 different countries, concerned about the dangers posed by GMOs to biodiversity, food security and human and animal health, demanded an immediate moratorium on such crops in accordance with the precautionary principle, opposed to GM crops intensify corporate monopoly, exacerbate inequalities and prevent the shift towards sustainable agriculture that can ensure food security and health worldwide and appealed-a day, desatendido- the prohibition of any type of patent life forms and living processes that threaten food security and violate basic human rights and dignity.
We, the undersigned scientists, we call for the immediate suspension of all environmental releases of GM crops and products derived therefrom, both commercially and in open field trials for at least 5 years; patents on living organisms, processes, seeds, cell lines and genes should be revoked and prohibited; and a thorough public inquiry into the future of agriculture and food security for all is required.
Patents on life forms and living processes should be banned because they threaten food security, promote biopiracy of indigenous knowledge and genetic resources, violate basic human rights and dignity, compromise healthcare, impede medical and scientific research and they are against the welfare of animals.
Instead, they bring many problems that have been identified, including friction production, increased use of herbicides, erratic performance and poor economic returns for farmers.
GM crops also intensify corporate monopoly on food, which is leading to family farmers into poverty, and preventing the essential shift towards sustainable agriculture to ensure food safety and health in the world
In the Biosafety Protocol of Cartagena negotiated in Montreal in January 2000, more than 130 governments have committed to apply the precautionary principle and ensure that the laws of biosafety at the national and international levels take precedence over trade and financial agreements World Trade organization.
1 . Patents on life forms and living processes should be banned because they threaten food security, promote biopiracy of indigenous knowledge and genetic resources, violate basic human rights and dignity, compromise healthcare, impede medical and scientific research and they are against the welfare of animals.
The dangers of GMOs to biodiversity and human and animal health, are now recognized by several sources within the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States.
particularly serious consequences associated with the potential for horizontal gene transfer.
These include antibiotic resistance to an extent that infectious diseases could return today incurable controlled, the generation of new viruses and bacteria that cause disease and harmful mutations which can lead to cancer.
Successive studies have documented productivity and social and environmental benefits of organic and family farming, low-input and completely sustainable.
It offers the only way to restore agricultural land degraded by conventional agronomic practices, and enables the autonomy of small family farmers to combat poverty and hunger.
We urge the US Congress to reject GM crops because they are dangerous and contrary to the interests of family farmers; and instead support research and development of sustainable agricultural methods that can truly benefit family farmers worldwide.
Life forms, such as organisms, seeds, cell lines and genes are discoveries and therefore are not patentable.
Current GM techniques which exploit living processes are unreliable, are uncontrollable and unpredictable, and can not be regarded as inventions.
In addition, these techniques are inherently unsafe, like many genetically modified organisms and products.
3 . Two simple features represent almost 40 million hectares of GM crops planted in 1999.
2 . It is increasingly clear that current GM crops are neither necessary nor beneficial. They are a dangerous diversion preventing the essential shift to sustainable agricultural practices that can provide food security and health worldwide.
Most (71%) are tolerant to broad-spectrum herbicides developed by his office to be tolerant with their own brand of herbicide, while the rest are engineered with Bt toxins to kill insect pests.
A statistical test based on 8200 of the most popular field of transgenic crop, soy, revealed that the transgenic soybean yield by 6.7% less and requires two to five times more herbicides than non - GM varieties.
This has been confirmed by a recent study at the University of Nebraska.
However, we have identified other problems such as erratic performance, disease susceptibility, the fruit abortion and poor economic returns for farmers.
7 . A coalition of family farmers in the US They have issued a list of demands, including the prohibition of ownership of all forms of life; suspension of sales, environmental releases and further approvals of GM crops and derived products pending an independent and comprehensive assessment of the environmental, social and economic health;
4 . According to the Food Program of the UN, there is enough food to feed the world one and a half more.
While the world population has grown by 90% over the past 40 years, the amount of food per capita has increased by 25%, yet one billion are hungry.
A new FAO report confirms that there will be enough or more than enough food to meet global demands without taking into account any performance improvement that could provide GM until well into 2030.
It is because of the growing corporate monopoly operating under the globalized economy the poor are getting poorer and hungrier pass.
Family farmers around the world have been brought to misery and suicide, and for the same reasons.
Between 1993 and 1997 the number of medium-sized farms in the US It fell by 74,440, and farmers are charging below the average production cost of its products.
The agricultural population in France and Germany declined by 50% since 1978. In the UK, 20,000 agricultural jobs were lost in the last year, and the Prime Minister announced an aid package of 200 million pounds.
Four companies control 85% of world trade in cereals at the end of 1999. Mergers and acquisitions continue.
5 . New patents on seeds intensify corporate monopoly by farmers impediment to save and replant seeds, which is what most farmers are doing in the Third World.
In order to protect their patents, companies continue to develop technologies that terminator seeds harvested fruit of a plant under bioengineering not germinate, despite worldwide opposition from farmers and civil society in general.
6 . Christian Aid, a major charity working with the Third World, concluded that GM crops cause unemployment, exacerbate Third World debt and threaten sustainable agricultural systems in addition to damaging the environment.
African governments condemned Monsanto's claim that GM needed to feed the world's hungry:
"We strongly oppose .. that the image of the poor and hungry from our countries is being used by large multinational corporations to push a technology that is neither safe nor environmentally nor economically beneficial to us ...
we believe it will destroy the diversity, the local knowledge and the sustainable agricultural systems that our farmers have developed over thousands of years and ... undermine our capacity to feed ourselves .
"A message from the Peasant Movement of the Philippines to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) of industrialized countries declared:
"The entry of GMOs will certainly intensify landlessness, hunger and injustice."
and companies are forced to take responsibility for all damages arising from their genetically modified crops and livestock products on humans and the environment.
They also demand a moratorium on all mergers and acquisitions on the closure of the farm, and an end to policies that serve big agribusiness interests at the expense of family farmers, taxpayers and the environment.
a lawsuit against Monsanto and nine other corporations for monopolistic practices and endorse GM crops to farmers without safety assessments and adequate environmental impact assessments have mounted.
10 . The products resulting from genetically modified organisms can also be dangerous.
8 . Some of the dangers of GM crops are openly acknowledged by the Governments of the United Kingdom and the United States. Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) in the UK has admitted that the transfer of GM crops and pollen beyond the planted fields is unavoidable, and this has already led to weeds resistant to herbicides.
An interim report on field trials sponsored by the UK Government has confirmed hybridization between adjacent plots of different varieties tolerant oilseed rape genetically modified herbicide, which resulted in hybrids tolerant to multiple herbicides.
Moreover, transgenic rapeseed and hybrids were found as weeds in wheat and barley after which were being controlled with conventional herbicides.
Bt-resistant pest insects have evolved in response to the continued presence of toxins in transgenic plants throughout the growing season, and the Agency for Environmental Protection US It is recommending farmers to plant up to 40% non-GM crops in order to create shelters for non-resistant insects pests.
9 . Threats to the biodiversity of the main transgenic crops are already marketed increasingly clear time.
The broad spectrum herbicide used with herbicide tolerant GM crops not only decimate wild plant species indiscriminately, but are also toxic to animals.
Glufosinate causes birth defects in mammals, and glyphosate is linked to Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Bt-transgenic crops toxins kill beneficial insects such as bees and lacewings, and Bt maize pollen is lethal to monarchs and it is for papilionids.
The Bt toxin is exuded from the roots of Bt in the rhizosphere where it binds rapidly to soil particles and becomes part thereof.
As the toxin is present in an activated form, non-selective, target and non-target species in the soil they will be affected, causing a huge impact on all species on earth.
For example, a batch of tryptophan produced by genetically modified microorganisms associated with at least 37 deaths and 1,500 serious diseases.
A genetically hormone modified bovine growth is injected in cows in order to increase milk production, not only causes excessive pain and diseases for cows, also increases IGF-1 in milk, which is linked to cancers breast and prostate cancer in humans.
It is vitally important for the public to be protected from all transgenic products, not just those containing genetically modified DNA or protein.
This is because the process itself of genetic modification, at least as currently practiced, is inherently dangerous.
Dr. Bevan Moseley
14 . These products are introduced into cells by invasive methods that lead to random insertion of foreign genes into the genome (the totality of all the genetic material of a cell or organism). This results in unpredictable random effects, including abnormalities in animals and unexpected toxins and allergens in food crops.
17 . Instability of transgenic DNA in genetically modified plants is well known.
11 . Secret memos Food and Drug Administration They revealed that the warnings of its own scientists that genetic engineering is a new starting point and introduces new risks are ignored. In addition, the first transgenic crop released for marketing - Flavr Savr tomato - did not pass the necessary toxicological tests.
Dr. Arpad Pusztai and his collaborators in the UK raised serious questions about the safety of GM potatoes they were testing. They conclude that a significant portion of the toxic effect may be due to genetic transformation or to the process used in the manufacture of genetically modified plants or both.
Dr. Bevan Moseley
12 . The safety of GM foods by Professor Bevan Moseley, molecular geneticist and current Chairman of the Working Group on Novel Foods in the Scientific Committee of the European Union Food openly disputed.
He drew attention to the inherent technology unexpected effects, emphasizing that the next generation of genetically modified food - the "nutraceuticals" or "functional foods", such as vitamin A rice 'called enriched' - pose even greater risks health due to the increased complexity of the gene constructs.
13 . Genetic engineering introduces new genes and new combinations of genetic material constructed in the laboratory on crops, livestock and microorganisms.
Artificial constructs derived from the genetic material of viruses and other pathogens genetic parasites and bacteria and other organisms, and include genes encoding antibiotic resistance.
The constructions are designed to break the species barriers and overcome the mechanisms that prevent the foreign genetic material insertion into the genomes.
Most of them have never existed in nature over thousands of millions of years of evolution.
15 . A common construction virtually all transgenic crops are already commercially undergo field testing involves a switch gene (promoter) of cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV) spliced by the foreign gene (transgene) to virus overexpress form keep going.
This CaMV is active in all plants, yeast, algae and E. coli.
We recently discovered that it is still active in amphibian egg and extract human cells.
It has a modular structure and can be exchanged partly or entirely with other promoters virus to give infectious virus.
It also has a "recombination hotspot 'where it is prone to break and join with other genetic material.
16. For these and other reasons, transgenic DNA - all the artificial constructs transferred in the GMO - may be unstable and prone to transfer back to unrelated species; potentially all species that interact with the OMG.
GM genes are often silenced, but the loss of part or all of transgenic DNA also occurs, even in later generations of propagation.
We are aware of no published evidence for the long term stability of transgene inserts in terms of structure or location in the plant genome in any of the transgenic lines already marketed or under field trials.
19 . The possibility that the bare or free DNA to be absorbed into mammalian cells explicitly mentioned in the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) draft guidance for industry on antibiotic resistance marker genes.
18 . The potential risks of horizontal gene transfer GM include genes propagation antibiotic resistance to pathogens, the generation of new viruses and bacteria that cause disease and mutations due to random insertion of foreign DNA, some of the which can lead to cancer in mammalian cells. CaMV capacity to function in all species, including humans is particularly relevant to the potential hazards of horizontal gene transfer.
In its comments on the document from the FDA, MAFF UK noted that transgenic DNA can not transfer just by ingestion, but by contact with dust and plant pollen airborne during agricultural work and food processing .
This warning is particularly significant with the recent report of the University of Jena in Germany field experiments indicated transgenes may be transferred via transgenic pollen to bacteria and yeasts in the gut of larvae of bees.
21 . The human mouth contains bacteria that have been shown to take up and express naked DNA containing antibiotic resistance genes and similar transformable bacteria are present in the airways.
24 . The British Medical Association in its interim report (published in May 1999), called for an indefinite moratorium on releases of GMOs pending further research on new allergies, the spread of genes for antibiotic resistance and the effects of DNA transgenic.
26 . We urge all governments to take due account of the already substantial scientific evidence of actual dangers or suspected arising from GM technology and many of its products, and to impose an immediate moratorium on new releases to the environment, including testing open field, according to the precautionary principle and sound science.
28 . Agroecological approaches hold great promise for sustainable agriculture in developing countries, in the combination of knowledge and techniques adapted to local conditions with contemporary western scientific knowledge of local agriculture. Yields have doubled and tripled and counting.
20 . Plant DNA is not readily degraded during most commercial food processing.
Procedures such as grinding and milling left grain DNA largely intact, as the heat treatment 90deg.C. Plants placed in silage showed little DNA degradation, and a special report UK MAFF discourages the use of genetically modified plants or plant residues in animal feed.
22 . It has been found that resistance marker genes to antibiotics genetically modified plants to transfer horizontally to soil bacteria and fungi in the laboratory.
Field monitoring revealed that DNA from GM sugar beet remained on the ground for up to two years after planting GM crop. And there is evidence suggesting that parts of the transgenic DNA are horizontally transferred to soil bacteria.
23 . Recent research in gene therapy and nucleic acid vaccines (DNA and RNA) leaves little doubt that naked / free nucleic acids can be taken, and in some cases, incorporated into the genome of all mammalian cells including humans.
Side effects reported and include acute toxic shock, delayed immunological reactions and autoimmune reactions.
25 . In the Biosafety Protocol of Cartagena successfully negotiated in Montreal in January 2000, more than 130 governments have agreed to implement the precautionary principle and to ensure that the laws of biosafety at the national and international levels take precedence over trade agreements and financial in the WTO.
Similarly, the delegates to the Conference of the Codex Alimentarius Commission in Chiba Japan, March 2000, have agreed to prepare stringent regulatory procedures for GM food, including the assessment prior to marketing, long-term monitoring of health impacts, genetic stability testing, toxins, allergens and other unwanted effects.
The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety has been signed by 68 governments in Nairobi in May 2000.
27 . Successive studies have documented the productivity and sustainability of family farming in the Third World, as well as in the North.
Evidence North and South indicates that small farms are more productive, more efficient and contribute more to economic development than large farms.
Small farmers also tend to make better stewards of natural resources, conservation of biodiversity and safeguard the sustainability of agricultural production. Cuba responded to the economic crisis caused by the breakup of the Soviet Bloc in 1989 by converting conventional large-scale, high monoculture entrance to small organic and semi-organic farming, thereby doubling food production with half the previous entry.
An estimated 12.5 million hectares worldwide are already grown successfully in this way. It is environmentally sound and affordable for small farmers.
Retrieves marginal croplands by conventional intensive farming. It offers the only practical way of restoring agricultural land degraded by conventional agronomic practices.
Above all, it empowers small family farmers to combat poverty and hunger.
Dr. Bevan Moseley
29 . We urge all governments to reject GM crops on the basis that they are dangerous and contrary to ecologically sustainable use of resources.
Instead, they should support research and development of sustainable agricultural methods that can truly benefit family farmers around the world.
Source and list of signatories: https://ecocosas.com/
Seen: Chipped Reality
Dr. Bevan Moseley
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