Organic Food and Farming News and Information - Ireland, UK, Europe and World

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Facts/Quotes Updated October 2004 >

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Treat the earth well. It was not given to you by your parents. It was loaned to you by your children. Kenyan proverb.

"I don't see any reason any more for a moratorium (on GM). We are at the beginning of a new technology ... I think this will become more and more the normal way to breed new varieties." Franz Fischler, defending the motion, "Free trade is fair trade" at the Oxford Union in May, when he was asked what he thought of Britain being on the point of authorising the growing of GM maize
"As we move on into this so-called biotech revolution and we start producing more and more transgenic manipulations, we'll start seeing pieces of DNA interacting with each other in ways that are totally unpredictable... I think this is probably the largest biological experiment humanity has ever entered into." - Ignacio Chapela
“As a scientist, I wouldn't drink milk from cows fed GM with the present state of knowledge”. Professor Bob Orskov, OBE, Director of the International Feed Resource Unit (Aberdeen), quoted on www.farm.org.uk this week. Read about their protests against Sainsburys for fair returns for UK dairy farmers.
"People did not invent agriculture and shout for joy. They drifted or were forced into it, protesting all the way." From Neanderthals, Bandits and Farmers - How Agriculture Really Began by Colin Tudge, LSE, and author of The Day Before Yesterday.
The hope of the industry (ABCs – AgBioTech Corps) is that over time the market is so flooded (with GM organisms) that there’s nothing you can do about it. You just sort of surrender!' This is the GM industry letting the cat out of the bag! Don Westfall, Vice President, Promar International, Washington, consultants to Kellogs, Unilever, Aventis etc. Full report, $5,000!
Agriculture is one of the most ill-conceived human endeavors. We plow down stable communities of hundreds of species of plants to get single-row crops. We replace entire ecosystems with pesticides, fertilizers, precious fresh water, and tractor emissions. Then, after every harvest, we start all over again. Organic agriculture breaks this cycle. But it's just a Band-Aid on the wound. Richard Manning, in an article, Super Organics in Wired. www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.05/food.html?tw=wn_tophead_4 Manning is the author of Against the grain: how agriculture has hijacked civilization.
It is difficult not to draw the conclusion that the freedom to rape children was somehow viewed as a benefit-in-kind, a perk of the job, a compensation for the rigours of celibacy... Irish journalist and barrister Brenda Power quoting a 'senior counsel' in relation to institutonal abuse. Article in the Sunday Times 30th November, 2003.
1. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. Nelson Mandela

2. That which we know is a little thing; that which we do not know is immense. Pierre-Simon de Laplace

3. Life is anything that dies when you stomp on it. Dave Barry
Everyone knows Bush is a very limited man. Alexander Cockburn in interview on 5-7 Live RTE Radio I, 18th November. He also said Murdoch's Fox TV News was "run by mad dogs" and that the United Nations was now reduced to the role of "an errand boy", simply, "an after-sales service for the US". Mr Cockburn gave a lecture in Trinity College on Tuesday night.
"The commercial growing of GM crops will mean the death of organic farming and the death of the democratic right to choose safe food." Jonny Barton, cycling from Scotland to London to attend the Tractors and Trolleys parade on Monday 13th October.
Over 25,000 tons of pesticides are used in the UK every year. Imagine a convoy of 1,000 trucks of poison bent on spreading its toxins on the relatively small agricultural area of the small island of Britain - and populations having to eat the produce that comes from that area! In a sane world, we would be declaring we have found WMDs (weapons of mass destruction) at home and GI Blair would bomb the shit out of it!
"Car Free Day (September 22nd throughout Europe)...is an annual exercise in environmental piety." The ascerbic Liam Fay in Sunday Times 21st September 2003. www.sunday-times.co.uk
"Anyone who looks into it (the WTO and Cancún) objectively cannot but be shocked at the way the rules are rigged." Mary Robinson, former Irish prsident, lately UN Human Rights Commissioner and now at Oxfam.
"Dad, Down Syndrome doesn't mean ' can't', it just means 'it may take a little longer".' from an email The wisdom of a child from Adoissa; 90k22x@juno.com promoting the Special Olympics site, www.soshopping.com
"Every sixty seconds, thirty acres of rain forest are destroyed in order to raise beef for fast-food restaurants that sell it to people, giving them strokes and heart attacks, which raise medical costs and insurance rates, providing insurance companies with more money to invest in large corporations that branch out further into the Third World so they can destroy more rain forests." From George Carlin's book, Napalm & Sillyputty (check Amazon) on deforestation. Thanks Gracie (see below).
'I can't understand how an intelligent man like Tony Blair can lister to a moron like George Bush'. Denis Halliday, Chief Humanitarian Co-ordinator, United Nations.
'All sacred cows spread mad cow disease'. Nicholas Moseby about fundamentalism, in his book, Inventing God (publ. 2003). He goes on to say, 'Humanity's creative consciousness may be our salvation. We, like novelists, can reinvent ourselves with new and better scripts. We are not perfectable, but we are improvable. We are subjects who can treat ourselves as objects. I have a belief in exceptional individuals who can think humanity out of trouible.'
'The deal would be this: If the Americans would stop lying about us, we would stop telling the truth about them.' - EU Development Commissioner Poul Nielson quoted in 'EU's Nielson blasts U.S. "lies" in GM food row' (Reuters Jan 20th 2003 but via www.ngin.org.uk ) www.forbes.com/home_europe/newswire/2003/01/20/rtr852190.htm
'Wars are poor tools for carving out the future. Archbishop of Dublin, Pro Cathedral 11/09/'02.
J' What I saw generically on the pro-biotech side was the attitude that the technology was good and that it was almost immoral to say that it wasn't good because it was going to solve the problems of the human race and feed the hungry and clothe the naked. And there was a lot of money that had been invested in this, and if you're against it, you're Luddites, you're stupid. There was rhetoric like that even here in this department. You felt like you were almost an alien, disloyal, by trying to present an open-minded view on some of the issues being raised. So I pretty much spouted the rhetoric that everybody else around here spouted; it was written into my speeches.' US Secretary of Ag, Dan Glickman, under the Clinton Administration, post-departure.
'Cowardice asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the question: is it political? Vanity asks the question: is it popular? But conscience asks the question: is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular - but one must take it simply because it is right.' Martin Luther King.
'To preserve the economic viability of the planet must be the first law of economics. To preserve the health of the planert must be the first committment of the medical professio. To preserve the natural world as the primary revelation of the divine must be the basic concern of religion. To think that the human can benefit by a deleterious exploitation of any phase of the structure or functioning of the earth is an absurdity.The well-being of the earth is primary. Human well-being is derivative' . Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry in The Universe Story.
The health of a people is really the foundation upon which all their happiness and all their power as a State depends.' Disraeli, 1877.

Here on the the mountainous and boggy Beara Peninsula, one older farmer, looking askance at the efforts of his young neighbour to improve his hill farm, was heard to say; "Will you look at yer man trying to reclaim land where God has failed?" From Jim O'Sullivan, Castletownbere.
'Like I said before, I would rather be fishing with my grandkids than fighting this but, by golly, somebody, somewhere, sometime has to take a stand.' - Percy Schmeiser speaking in Norfolk at the 2020 ‘Feeding or Fooling the World?’ debate.
'For any scientist who wants a good job and a nice home with mortgage payments, he's not going to choose the Union of Concerned Scientists.' Hugh Gusterson, MIT, quoted in Science Good, Nature Bad: The Biotech Dogma.
'When we spliced the profit gene into academic culture, we created a new organism - the recombinant university. We reprogrammed the incentives that guide science. The rule in academe used to be "publish or perish." Now bioscientists have an alternative - "patent and profit." ' - Paul Berg, Stanford University.
'The only real way forward is to de-centralize the system (organic wholesaling etc). Growing locally and selling locally, is good for the producer, their customers and the environment '. Richard Auler, organic pioneer in Ireland, interview on Planorganic.com, 3rd July 2001.
It takes one ton of chemicals to produce 6,000 litres of wine.
Gale Norton, Bush’s new Secretary of the Interior described as, " ...a natural disaster" by Carl Pope, Pres. of the 600,000 member environment org, Sierra Club.
July 2001 "...... in Genoa many fools have received their due." Andrew Apel, editor of the biotech industry's Agbionews, referring to the death and injury meted out by the brutal Italian police during the anti-globalisation demonstrations.
The Tobin Tax of 0.25% on currency trading could yield $250 billion for international aid – five times the current level.
US federal food inspectors examine conveyor belts of chicken and turkey – visually!
In Jan 2001, following the BSE scare in Germany, more than 6%of population became vegetarian in one week.
'Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men'. - Martin Luther King.
'Health is the birthright of every living organism'. - Sir Albert Howard.
Every day in America, 250,000 people suffer food poisoning, 1,000 are hospitalised, and 25 die.
'For some, talk of sustainable agriculture sounds like a luxury the poor can ill-afford. But in truth it is good science, addressing real needs and delivering real results. For too long it has been the preserve of environmentalists and a few aid charities. It is time for the major agricultural research centres and their funding agencies to join the revolution.' New Scientist, 3 February, 2001.
'Humans, in the last 60 seconds of biological time, have made a rubbish tip of Paradise' - Irish environmental group, Voice.
It is poverty that denies people access to food; gene technology makes food even dearer and thus even less available to the poor. Political and financial will combined with safe, sustainable agricultural systems and a move towards vegetarianism realistically promise lasting solutions to world hunger and environmental conservation. Jim O'Connor, Hungry Hill, Cork, Ireland. Letter published in Time, Aug 28th '00, in reply to a pro-GM article by Bill Gates.
# (But even captains of the GM industry say the same as above). 'If anyone tells you that GM is going to feed the world, tell them that it is not…To feed the world takes political and financial will'. Steve Smith, SCIMAC and Novartis (now SYNGENTA), Tittleshall Village Hall public meeting on proposed local GM farm scale trial, 29th March, 2000.
The US and Europe account for 80% of world food exports - We are killing everything with our export subsidies' - Daniel Bove, London, June 2001.
'The year 2,000 will be remembered as the year organic became mainstream'. - Tesco spokesman, Sept, 2,000.
'One cannot solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that created it.' - Einstein.
# This quote from Martin Luther King is perhaps particularly appropriate in this post Septmber 11th period. "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction....The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation."
'The responsibility for ensuring safe, sustainable and ethical production is shared by consumers, producers and society.'- Sweden's Ag. Min., Margareta Winberg, April 2001 at EU meeting in Sweden.
'In this new century salmon will return to the Rhine but disappear from many Irish rivers .' Dick Warner, Irish broadcaster and environmentalist.
'If you're not living on the edge you're taking up too much room.' - Tony Foutz, American writer living in Ireland.
'We don’t know shit about biology.' - Craig Ventner the unraveller of the human genome.
Twenty five million pounds of antibiotics - 70% of national production - are routinely used in animal feed in the US.
In the UK antibiotics are used primarily as growth promoters in the feed of 99% of chickens and turkeys, 80% of pigs and 50% of sheep and cattle.
Every 30 seconds a baby dies because it was not breastfed
FDA (US, Food and Drug Administration) estimate that 20% of chickens and 50% of turkeys contain toxins and that 80 million people "may get sick from factory-contaminated food", costing the nation $5 – $10 billion annually.
'If they don't get it right this time they never will.' - Rupert, English art-therapy lecturer, based in Ireland, referring to the Danish Organic Conference, May 2001.
'The one benefit of the GM debate is that the average Joe is now talking about food security.' - Alex Wijeratna of the development agency, Action Aid, in Financial Times 8/9/’00.
'We can each make a huge difference in our own little space, create a green holistic oasis, influence our family and friends and let the ripples float outward for a better environment world-wide.' – Darina Allen, Irish celebrity chef and environmentalist.
'Organic food is neither fad nor fashion – its about quality, family food at prices that don’t cost the earth.' – spokesman, Asda UK.
Juliette de Bairacli Levy recalled her friend, Sir Albert Howard's cattle, in India, who often "rubbed noses over the fences with the native cattle suffering from foot and mouth disease" yet never caught the disease themselves. The Ecologist, May, 2001.
It takes 1.5 acres to feed the average American. In Asia, people can feed themselves on only 0.2 of an acre. The Irish poor, before the 19th C, Great Famine (caused primarily by potato blight destroying the staple food of the landless cottier class) could support themselves on similar, tiny acreages.
'Increased food production will not solve hunger worldwide. Giving out food or money will not address the causes of hunger, (which are).. unjust distribution of land and resources, huge unequal access to education and health services, and corruption'. - Miguel Villegas, "scientist and citizen from the third world", Oxford, April '01.
'If Monsanto can collect fees from farmers who find their fields contaminated with GM crops, should computer users pay licence fees to the writers of computer viruses ?' New Scientist , April 28, 2001, Letters, p. 53, Paying the polluter,Thomas Ward, University of East Anglia.
'The challenge for western scientists is to develop a holistic science to help revitalise all kinds of non-corporate sustainable agriculture and holistic medicine that can truly bring food security and health to the world.' - Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, in a paper delivered to a US academy 16th April '01.
'Health issues are the killing fields for the biotech industry'. – PR firm quoted in NGIN, Newsletter, 18th March ’01.
# 'Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the less developed countries?. The economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable. Under-populated countries in Africa are vastly under-polluted'. Internal memo, Lawrence Summers, chief economist, World Bank, 1991.
'We consider the use of the South's rural poverty to justify the monopoly control and global use of genetically modified food production by the North's transnational corporations, not only an obstructive lie, but a way of derailing the solutions to our Southern rural poverty. It is the height of cynical abuse of the corporations' position of advantage.' Joint statement signed by over 40 developing country NGOs.
Every 3.6 seconds someone dies of hunger; 75% are children.
'Human health will continue to suffer on the anvil of profit'. – Dr R. Anderson.
'The hope of the industry (ABCs – AgBioTech Corps) is that over time the market is so flooded (with GM organisms) that there’s nothing you can do about it. You just sort of surrender!' Don Westfall, Vice President, Promar International, Washington, consultants to Kellogs, Unilever, Aventis etc. Full report, $5,000!
The global economy is worth $25 trillion. A trillion is 1,000 billion. !% of this would solve all poverty, healthcare and educational problems throughout the world.
A farmer on UK, TV discussion forum said in exasperation at environmentalists in the audience that, " Roundup is so safe you could drink it"!
Instructions for Life in the new millennium, from the Dalai Lama (I'm not even remotely a Buddhist, but I think these instructions are of universal application).

1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

2. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.

3. Follow the three Rs: Respect for self, respect for others, responsibility for all your actions.

4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.

6. Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.

7. When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

8. Spend some time alone every day.

9. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.

19. Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.