GM-free Scotland

In 1994, Norman Braksick, the president of Asgrow Seed Company (now owned by Monsanto), predicted in the Kansas City Star that ''If you put a label on genetically engineered food, you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it."

To maintain ignorance in the market place, and so sell their produce, the biotech industry has stubbornly impeded all moves to label GM foods or to implement the seed segregation needed for this.

The constant threat of legal action against any US food supplier who dares to tell his customers what they are actually buying has successfully kept the American public in the dark throughout six years of steadily increasing, and unmonitored, GM input into their diet. In Europe, however, despite billions of dollars spent by the biotech industry on marketing, attempts to force-feed it GM food have been resisted. As the concerns voiced in Europe begin to filter through to the USA, the biotech industry has had to adjust its strategy. Where manipulative marketing and persuasion fail, use coercion.

The easiest way to make someone eat something is to ensure there is nothing else to eat.

Biotech companies have been systematically buying up seed companies world-wide. The choice for farmers will be patented GM seeds (and the expensive patent chemicals required to grow them) or nothing at all.

Man-made DNA in pollen can, and does, travel several miles, inevitably contaminating any related plants. And once its out there, it can't be recalled. GM agriculture cannot co-exist with other forms of agriculture: pollination ensures that ALL crops will finally become GM. American and Canadian crops are becoming thoroughly polluted as planned, but in Europe, the biotech industry has had to resort to growing ''experimental'' farm scale crops alleged to be ''vital'' tests of ''safety'' for the environment in order to ensure that the required genetic infiltration takes place. When every crop is polluted in every
country, labelling will be redundant.

Refusal by Europe, Japan and other countries to accept GM staple crops, has, of course, resulted in US farmers becoming reluctant to plant it. The biotech industry is countering this disobedience by suing any farmer found to have GM plants on land not licensed for their growth. In practice this means that anyone found to have unlicensed GM weeds has to pay compensation to the company responsible for the pollution. The only recourse for farmers is to buy a licence and sow their entire farm with GM seed. Patents and pollutants make the ideal biotechnological protection racket.

The biotech industry is well aware that the discontent over GM food is rumbling on and that it won't go away overnight. The long-term strategy is to make sure that the next generation does not fail to eat up its genes. Free magazines, extolling the wonders of genetic manipulation and dressed up as glossy
educational aids are being handed out to schools. The instructions on the final page leave no doubt as to their purpose:

"People have a responsibility to keep informedabout these rapid advances so they can guide the outcome of scientific research. You probably now understand more about these complex issues than most adults. Go and educateyour elders!"

A chilling tale of the destruction of the organizing power of DNA, of the devastation of the sustenance on which our bodies depend for health, of the control of the global food chain, of the manipulation of knowledge, of free-will and of young minds.