One Stanford professor says Greenpeace’s campaign to ban genetically modified food in poor countries struggling with chronic hunger and malnourishment “is no less brutal than the Islamic State.”
“[I]t is barbaric for Greenpeace to oppose the availability of new plant varieties in less-developed countries such as the Philippines” writes Dr. Henry Miller, a Fellow in Scientific Philosophy & Public Policy at Stanford University and a former director of the American Council on Science and Health, in an email to The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Greenpeace is again trying to stop the Philippines from using genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to solve hunger and vitamin deficiency. The group believes, without evidence, that GMOs are “contaminating non ‘GE’ environments and future generations in an unforeseeable and uncontrollable way.”
“Farmers and consumers in less-developed countries such as the Philippines will benefit most from the myriad improvements of genetically engineered plants. GE [genetically engineered] plants improve food security, which is more critical in less-developed countries, where the success of a crop can literally spell the difference between starvation and survival.” says Miller.
In the Philippines 18.3 percent of households “experienced hunger” in 2014 and public satisfaction with the government’s efforts to feed the hungry is “weak” according to surveys. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations estimates 13.7 million people in the country are “undernourished.”
Greenpeace has long been associated with eco-terrorism against property to protest genetically modified organisms. The organization’s values statement promises “we are committed to nonviolence,” but as Scientific American says “their ‘non-violent’ opposition to Golden Rice contributes directly to real human death and suffering.”
In 2013, protesters affiliated with Greenpeace destroyed a genetically modified crop of Golden Rice in the Philippines due to alleged health concerns. The rice is genetically modified to prevent blindness and malnutrition by providing vitamin A to impoverished children. Vitamin A deficiency kills 1.15 million children each year according to the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund. Academic studies estimate Greenpeace’s delaying of Golden Rice in India alone has cost 1,424,000 life years since 2002.
Greenpeace’s crimes against property aren’t limited to Golden Rice. Greenpeace protesters also destroyed trials of genetically modified wheat operated by Australia’s national science agency. “For an organisation that claims to be dedicated to the protection of the environment, this is an unconscionable act” says Suzanne Cory, president of the Australian Academy of Sciences, to Nature.
Greenpeace also used the Filipino court system to its advantage, taking legal action to prevent genetically modified eggplants from being sold. Scientific American called Greenpeace’s action an “ominous defeat for science and reason.”
Greenpeace has become so extreme that Dr. Patrick Moore, who co-founded the environmental group, now says it “no longer cares about people and that it had become more interested in politics than science.”
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