Genetically Engineered Crops are "False Miracles"

World Health Day: Genetically Engineered Crops are “False Miracles”, Warn Global Experts

With “Food Safety” being the theme for this year's World Health Day, 37 Laureates of the Right Livelihood Award from across the world have endorsed a declaration on the future of nutrition, denouncing Golden Rice and GM Bananas as “false miracles”.

On 8 March 2015, Vandana Shiva, 1993 Right Livelihood Award Laureate, and her organisation Navdanya, along with a coalition of women’s groups in India, began to call for signatures to a declaration on the future of nutrition. As many as 37 Right Livelihood Award Laureates have since endorsed this declaration adding support for the global movement against Golden Rice and GM Bananas. The declaration states that Golden Rice has not in fact proven to be more nutritious than indigenous varieties and that natural food sources like turmeric provide much more iron than GM bananas.

“As a source of nutrition for the Global South, Golden Rice has no real benefits. But considering the precedents set by soya, corn, canola and cotton, introducing Golden Rice as a way for large companies to gain control over entire food cultures based on rice, makes perfect sense,” states the declaration. It also reveals the environmental costs, potentially damaging health impacts and consequences for small-scale farmers of GM crop production, and calls for support for sustainable agro-ecology systems with crop diversity and seed sovereignty.

, Warn Global Experts

With “Food Safety” being the theme for this year's World Health Day, 37 Laureates of the Right Livelihood Award from across the world have endorsed a declaration on the future of nutrition, denouncing Golden Rice and GM Bananas as “false miracles”.

On 8 March 2015, Vandana Shiva, 1993 Right Livelihood Award Laureate, and her organisation Navdanya, along with a coalition of women’s groups in India, began to call for signatures to a declaration on the future of nutrition. As many as 37 Right Livelihood Award Laureates have since endorsed this declaration adding support for the global movement against Golden Rice and GM Bananas. The declaration states that Golden Rice has not in fact proven to be more nutritious than indigenous varieties and that natural food sources like turmeric provide much more iron than GM bananas.

“As a source of nutrition for the Global South, Golden Rice has no real benefits. But considering the precedents set by soya, corn, canola and cotton, introducing Golden Rice as a way for large companies to gain control over entire food cultures based on rice, makes perfect sense,” states the declaration. It also reveals the environmental costs, potentially damaging health impacts and consequences for small-scale farmers of GM crop production, and calls for support for sustainable agro-ecology systems with crop diversity and seed sovereignty.

For the complete text of the declaration, please see
http://seedfreedom.info/campaign/declaration-for-international-womens-day-8-march-2015/
A summary is provided below this release.

For a list with Right Livelihood Award Recipients’ signatures to the declaration, among them also many men who support the women’s initiative, see here:
www.rightlivelihood.org/biodiversity_gmo.html

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