____________________________________________

MAHARISHI INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL OF NATURAL LAW PARTIES
NEWS SERVICE
Markt 1 • 6063 AC Vlodrop • The Netherlands
Tel.: +31-475-404111 • Fax: +31-475-403642
Internet: http://www.natural-law-party.org
E-mail: nlp@euronet.nl
____________________________________________

7 March 2000

CHALLENGE TO OECD CONFERENCE TO CALL FOR WITHDRAWAL OF GENETICALLY ENGINEERED FOODS

During last week's OECD Conference on GM Food Safety, held in Edinburgh, Scotland, US public interest attorney Steven Druker created a dramatic impact when he revealed how US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) scientists repeatedly warned the agency about the health hazards of genetically engineered foods and how their warnings were systematically covered up. For the international press corps covering the event this was one of the most exciting and newsworthy developments during the three-day conference, the rest of the debate being fairly predictable.

Towards the end of the first session of the OECD conference on Monday 28February, Patrick Holden, Director of the Soil Association (the organisation that maintains organic standards in the UK), gave a powerful speech from the floor of the conference to the 400 delegates. He said that he had been refused an opportunity to speak from the platform and that there was a clear bias in the agenda in favour of genetically engineered food. He announced a lunch time press conference at which Steven Druker and others would speak.

The event took place at the Scottish Parliament and had to be moved to the largest Committee Room available in order to accommodate the 50 media who turned up along with well over 50 "observers" from the main conference OECD officials, representatives of the biotech companies, etc. In the packed room it was a lively and powerful event that felt like history in the making. 

Facing a bank of television cameras and speaking into a dozen microphones, Steven Druker was supported at the event by Dr Geoffrey Clements, leader of the Natural Law Party of the UK, and the leaders of the Soil Association, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and GeneWatch. The event, which had been organised at the suggestion of the Natural Law Party, was hosted by Robin Harper of the Green Party, who was recently elected as an MSP - a Member of the new Scottish Parliament. 


"Precautionary principle" must be respected with regard to GM food

Collectively the speakers challenged the OECD conference to take note of the information that has come to light in the lawsuit Mr Druker is co-ordinating against the US FDA - 44,000 pages of internal FDA documents indicating a
massive cover up of scientist's warnings (refer to press release we sent you on 17 February 2000 - available on our web site at www.natural-law-party.org). Mr Druker said that with this new information the OECD conference should recommend that international law on the "precautionary principle" must be respected and that all GM foods must be withdrawn immediately.

Dr Clements brought out the parallels in the UK with many eminent scientists, including scientists at the John Innes Centre (a leading adviser to the UK government on GM risk assessment), having identified important risks for health or the environment from genetically engineered food and crops. Dr Clements urged Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, to stand by his recent statement that he would ensure "the most rigorous safety assessments in the world" and therefore suspend all approvals for GM foods in the UK. 

Journalists from all over the world were in attendance along with most of the national media from Scotland and the UK. This included the Times, Telegraph, Guardian, Independent, Financial Times, BBC, Sky TV, New Scientist, Nature, the Scotsman, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, Kyodo News (Japan), Canadian Broadcasting, Irish national radio news, Toronto Star, Dow Jones, six US newspapers, Nationen (Norway), and many others.

The event ran for three times as long as scheduled and then continued into several other impromptu press briefings in the corridors as representatives of the US FDA and the OECD were pressed by journalists to answer the questions that had been raised. It was also referred to by almost every speaker at the conference for the rest of the day, including the conference chairman, Sir John Krebs, who encouraged delegates to address the issues that had been raised. 

"US accused of suppressing GM food fears" declared the headline of the Daily Telegraph's report on the OECD conference the next day. "Lawyer's challenge to US over GM safety claims" proclaimed The Guardian. Similar reports
appeared in most of the British media. The Scottish Herald devoted its font page to the issue, under the banner headline: "Cover-up claim on the safety of GM foods - Challenge to US as Edinburgh talks open".


"The Other GM Summit" at Edinburgh University

The next day Steven Druker and the Natural law Party were invited to participate in a special evening debate with other OECD conference delegates in front of an audience of well over 100 at the Centre for Human Ecology, which is associated with Edinburgh University. The debate called "The Other GM Summit" was lively and dramatic. As soon as the audience heard that Steven Druker was there they burst into spontaneous applause. There were strong exchanges between Mr Druker and pro-GM scientists.

During the debate, Patrick Holden of the Soil Association said that genetic engineering is just the latest in a series of "scientific" interventions in agriculture over the last fifty years that are only making things worse because they deal with symptoms rather than working with Nature. 

Peter Warburton, Deputy Leader of the UK Natural Law Party, said that the degree of risk and uncertainty involved in GM foods is so great that they should not be grown at all. He was applauded when he called for a widening of the debate beyond considering the merits of GM food to investigate truly natural sustainable systems of agriculture, such as Vedic agriculture, which comes from the most ancient, holistic system of knowledge of Natural Law.

Other positions in the debate became clear when the spokesman for biotech company Novartis said that the main objective of his company was to be as profitable as possible for their share holders, and the president of Gene Campaign, India, called for help in the developing world to stand up to commercial exploitation by the multinational biotech companies. 

The document summarising the deliberations of the OECD conference will be passed on to the next G8 summit of the leaders of the most wealthy industrialised nations for them to decide the way forward for the world. It is very clear from the conference that world leaders can no longer ignore public opinion on this issue and that the Natural Law Parties have made
considerable progress in their world-wide campaign to educate the public about the dangers of genetically engineered foods and to achieve a total ban. 

Taken from website: http://www.netlink.de/gen/Zeitung/2000/000307a.html

_______________________________________________

To SUBSCRIBE to the Maharishi International Council of Natural Law Parties NEWS SERVICE 
please send a message to: nlp@euronet.nl
The service is free of charge.
Please VISIT OUR WEBSITE: http://www.natural-law-party.org
containing video clips, news, events, key issues, principal policies, 
as well as all past press releases.Please inform your friends.
_______________________________________________

Home

Maharishi Vedic Organic Agriculture Institute will support farmers everywhere to leave behind the exploitive practices of GMO and chemical based agriculture and to nourish their families, the environment, their nation, and the whole world with pure organic and Maharishi Vedic Organic food. Maharishi's Vedic Agriculture projects are small islands of World Peace, rapidly growing to encircle the world with a peaceful influence. (http://www.istpp.org/enews/2002_11_30.html)

BACK TO SAFEAGE WEBSITE ON WHAT ORGANISATIONS SAY ABOUT GMOS