UK: Waste of money on GM industry

GeneWatch UK's Director Dr Helen Wallace has resigned from the Steering Group for the Food Standards Agency's GM dialogue after the Steering Group has met to agree a 450,000 £ bid and 50,000 £ evaluation for its public dialogue on GM crops and food, acording to GeneWatch. Additional money will be spent on paying the civil servants and consultants who will be managing the exercise. The budget was approved by the former Government and is overseen by the FSA, which is chaired by former Labour Agriculture Minister Jeff Rooker.
 
Freedom of Information requests and internal documents show that the dialogue is an integral part of the GM industry' s PR strategy. This involves claiming non-existent future benefits like GM will feed the world whilst portraying step-by-step contamination of GM-free shipments into Britain and Europe as inevitable and lobbying to weaken regulation. Dr Wallace said that taxpayers would be shocked that a former minister was blowing public money on a PR exercise on behalf of GM companies. The USA-based company Monsanto controls 95 % of the market for GM seeds. Dow (USA), DuPont (USA), Syngenta (Switzerland), BASF (Germany) and Bayer (Germany) are the other companies involved. The FSA's description of the GM dialogue is available here

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