GM and Propaganda

As at least half of my readers are from overseas, I need to explain how The BBC British Broadcasting Corporation is funded. In Britain If you have a Television or a video recorder that has a tuner or even a computer that has a TV card is is capable of receiving broadcast signals you need a TV Licence. This Money goes to fund the BBC. While there are some that see this as a tax, the money this raise does mean that the BBC can and does produce some very good quality television programmes. As well as all the radio stations it has, and these you do not need a licence for so are effectively free and free from advertising. When it comes to the world service radio that is funded by a grant direct from government.

Even though the BBC is indirectly funded by the British government, it does maintain editorial independence, well most of the time. There was one incidence that stands out in my memory during the First Gulf War when on the radio programme From Our Own Correspondent there was an essay that really sounded like propaganda As I am a regular listener to that broadcast I even noticed that the person reading the essay was not a name that I recognised. Well in days it was exposed as not a BBC correspondent but a NATO press officer. The programme and the BBC had effectively been caught presenting propaganda as news in the most blatant manner.

While on the whole I am full of praise for some of what the BBC does, there is also a lot of rubbish they put out too. However, overall I do think that most of the Auntie Beebs output is quite balanced. That said I have noticed a subtle but disturbing trend in the BBC out put on one particular topic that of GMO, Genetically Modified Organisms.

Earlier this year the then Government Minister for Agriculture said that as GM had been grown for ten years in the US then it was time for the opponents of GM to prove there was a danger from this technology. The implication being that if no scientific evidence was put forward that GMOs are proved to be harmful, then GMOs would be allowed in Britain. Since this announcement I have noticed more of the output from the BBC seems to be more bias towards allowing GM to be grown here. Or extolling the future benefits that may come from GM.

Now taking any single programme or news report in isolation does not prove bias and nor should it be. However, since the change in government policy the BBC has reported on GM in a much more positive way. Recently there was an episode of Horizon, A science programme that looked at the issue of GM. While the programme seamed balanced, it is all part of what appears to be an effort by the Government via the BBC to change attitudes to be more favourable towards GMOs.

The Bio Technology industry has always been a great self promoter and there has always been promises of new crops that will help feed the world, but the reality is that all that has been commercialised have been crops that benefits big business and large scale agriculture.

While we have been selectively breeding animals and plants for centuries. However the traditional methods use the genes that were ready there, enhancing traits. With Genetic Modification the scientists are introducing genes from other species. Sometimes even introducing animal genes into a plant and vice versa. So there is a real fundamental difference between traditional breeding and GM. Genetically Modified Organisms could not ever occur naturally.

This has already lead to what is called Genetic Drift. There are already proven and scientifically validated examples where weeds have cross pollinated with wild plants to produce herbicide resistant weeds. The two main developments that GM has given us and are commercially used is herbicide resistant crops as well as insect resistant crops. These crops kill any pest that tries to eat them. The problem is that unlike the herbicide resistant weeds that have spontaneously occurred and are apparent when the herbicides are used, the crosses that have occurred from introducing insect resistant plants into the environment are nearly impossible to spot. While no proven and scientific validated examples have been found, they are out there.

The proof that they are out there can be seen with the condition known as; Colony Collapse Disorder, found in Bees. The problem is that to find these plants would require running DNA tests on every plant in a field or meadow.

Genetically modified organisms are out there and the pollution they cause is already happening. Add to this the fact that when tested GMOs do have a suppressant effect on the immune system. This is not a theoretical problem but one that is well known in the industry and they test to exclude developing organisms that carry that effect to strongly.

Now while I can see the attractive potential for the the British government of having a strong Bio Technology industry, the government needs to be sceptical of the industry claims. Thus far GM has not helped feed the starving and what has been developed has had serious environmental impacts already. Forests have been cleared to create monoculture soya plantations in South America. And far from helping to feed the poor it has decreased the ability of the poor in those countries to feed themselves. In India farmers are committing suicide because of the debts they owe the GM companies because the yields have been far lower than promised by the Bio Technology industry.

There are many examples where an industry has promised much but delivered little and all governments have suffered from this. With GM the British government needs to look very carefully at the real threats to the environment that this industry creates.
In ten or twenty years time when the damage has become so clear that GMOs will end up being banned who will clean up this pollution? I can bet that it will not be the Bio Technology industry.

Further with its role in creating the propaganda that seems to be peddling now, will the BBC then be able to report the failings of the industry?

Rather than making unsubstantiated claims of benefits in the future, the Bio Technology industry needs to prove its products are completely safe before they are allowed in this country.