GMO: what are the dangers?

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1845, Ireland The potato famine:
a handbook case for 1999 and the future

The facts (from the newspaper "Il Sole 24 ore"
of 06/26/1999)

"In order to obtain an improvement of the productivity of the potato crops - which at the time was the main nutritional resource for the eight million inhabitants of Ireland - an hybrid which seemed particularly productive was introduced in cultivation. And for two years the crops were really beyond expectations. As a direct consequence, the Irish farmers decided to opt in mass for that new variety of potato. But when in 1845, a serious illness - due to the action of an infesting fungus - strick the hybrid and destroyed it, the agricultural system, by then characterized by a substantial monoculture, was disastrously involved. (...) a catastrophic impact on the agricultural system of a whole country and on the fate of generations of Irish people: agriculture was destroyed, a million people starved to death..."

The fact needs no further comments and belies many arguments of those who try to minimize the risks of the diffusion of transgenic products destined to nutrition or that could enter the nutritional chain.

We quoted facts, not opinions.

The probability that the mirage of richer crops, with the promise of less costs and risks, leads to the distruction of bio-diversity (that is, to cultivate only the same kind of tomato, or soy or else) , is evident also to a child and denying it easily implies ill faith or guilty ineptitude.

Not realizing or minimizing the impossibility to foresee what are the weak points of the cultivations implies serious responsibilities: the Irish case proves only one of this risks. The risks for health, not last that already verified of modifications to our DNA, are as big if not bigger, and still, in great part, to be discovered (see rest of site).

Not acting in time at the legislative level in defense of the whole community, against such serious risks, protecting only the interests of some parties, excludes the possibility of calling "democracy" the form of government of such community.

Yesterday the Council of Ministers of the Environment in Luxembourg has approved a new directive which makes the authorization for cultivation and commercialization of genetically modified organisms more difficult.

A compromise solution between those who want a stop to transgenic foods in order to study the real risks and those who want to increase their use.

Curiously, Ireland was among the latter.

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