Originally published June 27 2015
Pro-GMO corporate shill Mark Lynas exposed yet again as a self-contradicting liar
by Amy Goodrich
(NaturalNews) Mark Lynas, once a powerful voice of the movement against genetically modified (GM) foods, already made it clear in a long speech at the Oxford Farming Conference in 2013 that he no longer stands behind his own ideas.
"I want to apologize for having spent several years ripping up GM crops," he said. "I am also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the '90s, and that I thereby assisted in demonizing an important technological option which can and should be used to benefit the environment."
While this was a big story back in 2013, his latest attempt to promote GMO food was a big mistake, and once again the public exposed his failure to promote GMO food to the world.
A few weeks back, he wrote an article for The New York Times which tells the story of Mr. Rahman, a smallholder farmer in Bangladesh, who was able to lift his family out of poverty thanks to GM Bt brinjal (eggplant/aubergine).
You can read his story here: NYTimes.com.
Just after publishing the story, The New York Times received a number of letters which pointed out that this story was based on false claims, given that most of the GM crops in that region failed for the second year in a row.
Click here to read some of these letters: NYTimes.com.
Despite all the protests to protect Bangladesh's most important crop, GM Bt brinjal was rapidly approved for commercial use last year.
Earlier this year, United News of Bangladesh sent out a reporter to visit 12 of these GM brinjal fields in the districts of Manikganj, Narsingdi and Comilla, where he hardly found any living or fruiting plant.
While Mark Lynas paints the picture that GM eggplant will give farmers a better future and increase their profits, Bt brinjal is actually pushing them further down the lane of poverty as plants either died prematurely from diseases or fruited very insignificantly compared to the locally available non-GM varieties.
Md Abul Hayat, a respected and successful local farmer, said, "Most of the saplings (of Bt brinjal) have died. The plants are prone to diseases. The officials said it's due to bacterial attack and prompted by irrigation and soil-type."
"If irrigation and soil-type had been a problem, why the local brinjal plants on my other field had not been affected?" he asked pointing to a brinjal field next to his Bt brinjal one.
Md Haminur Rahman and Md Mobarak Hossain of Sherpur Sadar upazila [similar to a county], two other smitten farmers, added that they only harvested about 8-10 maunds of Bt brinjal in three months. This is less than half the amount that could be harvested from a local non-GM brinjal field of the same size.
And even worse, introducing these GM plants can spread new diseases to locally gown varieties, putting Bangladesh's most important crop for home use and export at great risk.
Up until now, the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), which provides the seeds to the farmers, hasn't taken any action to stop this experiment or further investigate these new diseases that form an economic and environmental threat.
Sources for this article include:
https://vimeo.com
http://gmwatch.org
http://newagebd.net
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