Irish aid groups say GM foods no answer to world hunger

The insistence by multinationals that they can feed the world with the introduction of genetically modified (GM) foods should be dismissed as "dangerous marketing hype", according to a group of Irish Third World groups and research institutes.

"GM crop varieties will never end world hunger despite the extravagant claims by multinational agribusiness," the group insisted in a statement issued by Action Aid Ireland, Trocaire, Concern Worldwide, UCC's International Famine Centre (IFC) and the Development Studies Centre (DSC) at Kimmage Manor, Dublin.

The group dismissed Monsanto's recent "let the harvest begin" campaign and implications that European consumers were selfishly denying the "benefits" of new modified crops to the Third World.

"Multinationals are spending millions on advertising to sell us the dream that genetically engineered crops will feed the world," said Mr Tom Campbell of DSC. "Monsanto is saying huge productivity will follow from their modified seeds, and this will end hunger. Modified crops will increase Third World dependency by killing off traditional seed types, locking farmers into annual purchase of seeds, herbicides and pesticides from these same companies."

The multinationals were playing on public guilt about world hunger to get support for their "gene revolution", said Mr Stephen Jackson of the IFC, but such claims were nothing new. "In the 1960s and 1970s, the so-called `green revolution' promised the end of hunger through improved crops."

Many believed the resulting increased production actually made things worse by pushing marginal farmers off their land, he said. "Increasing agricultural production - even if biotechnology could do it - whilst ignoring the structural causes of poverty and hunger, won't increase food security for the world's poor."

World hunger was not about overall global food levels, it was about the right to the food, said Trocaire's food security officer, Ms Sinead Tynan.

"There is already enough to feed the world's poor," she said. "Hunger is not caused by lack of food, but by lack of access to food. The new crops will do nothing to change this."

A public information meeting on "The food we eat - genetic modification in our everyday diet" is being held at Rochestown Park Hotel, Cork, on Monday September 28th (7.30 p.m.).