Republican News · Thursday 31 January 2002

Sinn Féin opposes GM in Ireland

Calls for nationwide consultation

BY ROISIN DE ROSA

Sinn Féin delivered a serious challenge to both governments on Tuesday, in calling on both to have regard to Irish interests and keep the island free of Genetically Modified (GM) seeds and foods.

Agriculture spokesperson Gerry McHugh delivered a sharp call on behalf of all Irish farmers to Agriculture Minister Joe Walsh to institute a nationwide consultation on the important issue of GM which, he said, could irreversibly damage Irish farming interests. He was speaking at a press conference in Dublin chaired by the city's EU election candidate Marylou McDonald.

"Sinn Fein believes that the island of Ireland, which exports four fifths of our agricultural produce, cannot afford to allow GM seeds and foodstuffs into the country," he said. "Organic farming, which is a niche market upon which the very survival of Irish agriculture may well depend, will be wiped out and our image of 'green clean' food obliterated. We urgently need nation wide all Ireland consultation."

"This island cannot allow one part to opt for GM crops or food while the other part stays free. Cross contamination of hybrid plants and crops will contaminate the whole island," Gerry McHugh pointed out.

"Recently, Martin Ferris and myself went to Brussels and talked to the EU people about this and other agricultural issues, where Ministers in London and Dublin are not protecting all Irish interests. In the next few weeks, we will be meeting again with the ministers here, with North/South bodies, to impress on them the need to institute real consultation with farmers' organisations, with NGOs and with consumers across our island who maybe do not want to eat foods of which the effects on health are most uncertain."

"People have a right to be consulted about what they eat", said Marylou. She pointed out that the EU Council of Ministers had only last week formally approved guidelines prohibiting national and regional governments from banning the use of GM organisms.

"What position are our EU MEPs taking on this issue? What is the Dublin government doing? Nothing. Minister Walsh told Martin Ferris in the Dail on 17 June that he has no plans to institute a formal public consultation process.

"Yet," she went on, "there is still scope for member states to prevent the cultivation of GM crops in some zones. Are we going to allow Minister Walsh to let this issue go by default?"

"We should not allow Ireland to be pushed down the road to GM by the EU, still less by ministers' sleveen attitudes to multi-million dollar corporations that seek to corner the world's food production."

Marylou scotched claims that GM foods will boost production and alleviate food shortages in the world. "Quite the contrary is the case," she said. "Yields on GM crops are lower by some 15% than with normal varieties, and far more costly to the farmer to grow. Per capita food production has outstripped population growth over the last 30 years by 15%. People starve today because they cannot afford food, not because it is in scarce supply.

"Monsanto's terminator seeds, where farmers are obliged to purchase a chemical spray to turn on the reproductive capacity of the seed, or Round-up Ready Soya, which makes the plants resistant to all other weedkillers and so obligates farmers to buy Monsanto's 'Round-up weed killer,' these GM seeds ensure that farmers have to buy Monsanto's chemical products. Do our farmers want to be in hock to Monsanto's empire? At least they could be asked first."

"We must expose the myth that GM increases agricultural productivity. The real motivation behind the drive to force GM on the globe is to tighten the control of multinationals on the entire food chain from seed to sale."

Several NGOs, including Oxfam, the Countryside Alliance and Trocaire, all represented at the conference, raised wider issues of Fair Trade and the need to push the EU and member states to support fair trade.

Marylou herself pointed out that GM food issues was just one part of the wider agenda of the 'richer' countries to allow corporations to patent life forms, under the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), and she appealed to NGOs to join together in a call for immediate public consultation.

"I do not believe," Gerry said, "that the people of this island support either GM foods or would like to realise they are directly responsible for the impoverishment and suffering in developing world countries because our ministers and the EU will not support fair trade amongst nations.

"We need these issues to be discussed across all of Ireland, before the Cancun World Trade Organisation negotiations take place in September, and ministers need to listen to what is said."