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Against the grain: IS GM food safe?
Necia Wilden
The Australian, April 30 2011 [extract]
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/executive-lifestyle/against-the-grain/story-e6frg8jo-1226044977709
Fran Murrell, GM campaigner
Fran Murrell, 49, estimates she spends at least six hours every day reading about genetic modification (GM) issues. She’s the co-founder of MADGE (Mothers Are Demystifying Genetic Engineering), a volunteer grassroots organisation formed in 2007 in protest at the Victorian Government’s lifting of the ban on the growing of GM canola. Murrell travels regularly in Australia and overseas speaking at conferences and questioning the science and safety of GM foods.
“My father trained as a market gardener in England. When he first started using pesticides, he noticed they were effective in the first year but by the third year the pests were back to normal, despite all the spraying,” she says. “I came to Australia in 1989 and did a graduate diploma at Melbourne Uni in environmental studies, and wrote an essay on pesticides. I had the idea that these sorts of substances were highly regulated and was shocked to find out that was not the case.
“I was curious about genetic modification of plants it struck me as a promising idea so I went to talks given by various GM proponents. It worried me that they were just talking in generalities, saying it was ‘highly unlikely’ there was any health risk from GM. That struck me as unscientific; it was like they were presenting the truth from on high to the lesser mortals. And then I met scientists who had doubts about GM, notably the British geneticist Mae-Wan Ho (author of Genetic Engineering: Dream or Nightmare?).
“After the government lifted the GM canola ban, I felt there was an injustice done and thought I had to do something. I wanted to make the complicated issue of GM relevant to ordinary people, people who are just trying to feed their families. So I set up a website I knew nothing about setting up websites and that’s how MADGE was born, with two other colleagues. We have a network of about 2000 members.
“My campaign to educate people about GM has cost me thousands of dollars, but that’s not the point. I’m exceedingly fortunate in that I do not need to work and that spending lots of time on the computer is not very expensive. I feel very privileged in that I’m able to do this, so I do it for people who don’t have the time or the financial means to research GM.
“Our opponents can’t defeat us in the world of evidence, science or argument we’ve done the research so they just ignore us. We’ve rung up scientists who support GM and ask them whether they’ve read the safety data and many of them haven’t. But I don’t want scientists to tag themselves as pro-GM or anti-GM. If scientists are worth their salt, they are looking at the evidence.
“There’s been a huge increase in food allergies in children since the introduction of GM foods here in the mid-’90s. The line we often get is, ‘There is no evidence it’s caused by GM.’ But no one is investigating it. The fact is, there have been very few animal-feeding trials done on GM foods those that do exist have often shown alarming results and our own food safety regulator, FSANZ, relies on Monsanto (the US-based biotechnology company and leading producer of GM seed) to do its own safety testing. So of course we can’t say for a fact that this spike in allergies is caused by GM, but we can say we’re worried about it, and we have a right to be worried.
“And how can you trace illness to GM when the labelling is so inadequate? I think most people have no idea they’re eating GM foods every day. They say they read the labels, but loopholes in our laws mean almost no GM ingredients require labelling. It’s only when people realise GM foods are affecting their daily lives that’s when they start to take an interest.
“Why do I mind? Because I feel a great love for the natural world and I can see the threat to it and that makes me so sad. It’s a lack of respect, an arrogance ... as a society we have no idea what we are doing.
“It’s difficult sometimes not to get depressed, but I haven’t got time to be pessimistic; I have to deal with the facts. GM is really more belief and religion than science. Sometimes GM supporters accuse me of not having ‘sensible opinions’, and I say that I have questions of a scientific nature that have not been answered, so how can I have ‘sensible opinions’ if you won’t answer my questions?”