Let them eat precaution

GM WATCH COMMENT

This new book (Let Them Eat Precaution: How Politics Is Undermining the Genetic Revolution in Agriculture) is published by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) - a key promoter of the US's war agenda on Iraq.

Tellingly, the book, which is full of righteous indignation at the denial of the supposed benefits of GM to the world's poor, is promoted on the AEI's website alongside an advert for an article that blames America's black families for "the persistence of a large and criminal lower class"!http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.23595/pub_detail.asp

The list of contributors to 'Let Them Eat Precaution' reads at times like a rogues' gallery.

Take, for instance, Monsanto's former Internet PR chief - Jay Byrne. Byrne is widely credited with designing the notorious Monsanto/Bivings' "Fake Persuaders" campaign, which utilised fake e-mail identities and a fake agricultural research center to post poison-pen attacks on Monsanto's critics.http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=27

Then there's AgBioWorld co-founders, C.S. Prakash and Gregory Conko. AgBioWorld was also party to the "Fake Persuaders" campaign, while Conko is a leading light of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which takes money from Monsanto, Exxon and Big Tobacco to aggressively promote the interests of all three! The AEI, incidentally, also takes Exxon's money and has even had Exxon's Vice President on its Board.http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=31

From Britain there's Tony Gilland, part of the far-right (Rwandan genocide and Serb war crimes denying) techno-utopian LM network - remember this is a book which claims that the GM issue has been contaminated by extremist political agendas!!
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=78

And from Canada there's Patrick Moore. Moore is described in the AEI's press release (below) as a former Greenpeace man but as currently heading "the environmental group Greenspirit". What it doesn't tell you is that this particular "environmentalist" denies global warming, opposes Kyoto, supports nukes and the clear-cutting of old growth forests, and takes money from industry!http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6033

For more on the unsavoury American Enterprise Institute:http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=256

Profiles of other contributors to the book can be found here: http://www.gmwatch.org/profile.asp