cAmsterdam, International, 13 February 2008 — The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications’(ISAAA) latest report (1) lacks scientific evidence to support its claims that genetic engineering is effective and the technique of choice.
„The ISAAA report is a piece of propaganda and lacks any credibility. The reality is that of the 1.5 billion hectares of arable land on the planet, more than 92% is cultivated without genetically engineered (GE)
plants and over 99% of farmers worldwide farm without resorting to GE crops,” said Greenpeace agriculture campaigner, Jan van Aken.
„In fact, rice and wheat, two of the world’s most important staple crops, are still grown GE free. And increasingly more countries are opting for an outright ban on GE crops, as can be seen by France’s
recent announcement to ban the commercial planting of GE maize,” van Aken said.
„Every year, the ISAAA report claims that GE is growing in popularity, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. As is the case with its predecessors, the report is littered with false claims and manipulated statistics,” van Aken added.
Just one of the examples that demonstrates this exaggeration is the ISAAA claim that half the world’s population benefits from GE crops. This figure is arrived at by adding together the entire population
figures of China, India and all other countries where GE crops are grown, despite the fact that these crops are only grown on a very small scale in the vast majority of those countries. In China, for example, GE
represents only 2.9% of Chinese agriculture area, in Europe it is only 0.119% of the agricultural area.
The sentiments of Filipino maize farmer Mr. Tomas Datinguinoo, from the province of Oriental Mindoro, give an indication of why GE acreage in the Philippines remains low: „I decided to stop planting Bt corn after
trying it out for one season. The cost of seeds was so high.” Mr. Datinguinoo is still in debt to the Monsanto technician who sold him the seed.
