Greenpeace activists unfurl a banner reading This Is Your Food on Drugs, Ban Genetically Engineered Drug Crops at an Aurora, Nebraska grain facility
Two Greenpeace activists unfurled a banner on a silo containing
500,000 bushels of soybeans contaminated by genetically engineered
drug-producing corn. The banner read "This is your food on drugs.
Ban genetically engineered drug-crops". Greenpeace publicly
demarcated this huge, contaminated food mound to expose the
inherent dangers in conducting genetically engineered crop
experiments in open fields near food crops.
"The biotech industry is playing genetic roulette with our
food," said Charles Margulis, Genetic Engineering Campaigner with
Greenpeace USA. "This crazy experiment of growing drugs in one of
our nation's most important staple foods must cease immediately. We
urge President Bush to take swift action to protect our food."
In a letter faxed to President Bush today, Greenpeace, the
Center for Food
Safety, National Family Farm Coalition, and several other
national organisations urged the President to ban open-field
planting of genetically engineered drug crops, and to prohibit drug
production in food crops because it risks contaminating our nation
s food supply.
The genetically engineered drug that contaminated soybean stocks
is a
protein that is intended to vaccinate pigs. Anthony Laos, CEO of
ProdiGene, the company that caused the contamination, admits that
no human
health tests have been conducted on the pig drug to date.
According to
Doreen Stabinsky, Staff Scientist for Greenpeace s Genetic
Engineering
Campaign, All allergens are proteins, and any food contaminated
with the
GE drug poses an unacceptable risk to the people who unwittingly
eat it.
Environmentalists and scientists, including the U.S. National
Academy of
Sciences, have repeatedly warned that growing drug-producing
crops in open
fields and not in laboratories would inevitably contaminate our
food
supply. Drug-crops grown on farms across the U.S. today include
corn that
produces compounds such as untested AIDS and hepatitis B
vaccines, a blood
clotting agent, and other compounds not meant for human
consumption.
"These unregulated drug crops threaten our nation s food
security," said
Margulis. "Even though genetic engineers said it could never
happen here, Americans have narrowly escaped eating GE contaminated
food twice in three months. We must stop taking chances with
untested drug-crops that could poison our corn flakes, tacos, and
baby food," Margulis concluded.
VVPR info: Photos available from Greenpeace International Photo Desk, John Novis, Mob: +31 653819121