In which Greenpeace are inspired by the purity of their vision:
Three Greenpeace activists broke into a scientific farm near Canberra overnight on 14 July and destroyed a crop of genetically modified wheat… The farm belongs to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), the Australian national science agency, and the crop was part of research into developing genetically modified crop plants with enhanced nutritional value.
Suzanne Cory, president of the Australian Academy of Sciences, issued a statement in which she condemned the attack. “For an organisation that claims to be dedicated to the protection of the environment, this is an unconscionable act,” she said.
Greenpeace claims the research puts Australia’s $4.7 million wheat industry at risk of ‘inevitable’ contamination. According to a Greenpeace Australia report published on 6 July, the CSIRO trials, which include consumption of the wheat by human volunteers, pose serious health, economic and environmental risks. The organisation says that the CSIRO had rejected their request for documents outlining the health, safety and ethical parameters of its human trials.
But the Australian Office of the Gene Technology Regulator, which oversees experiments using genetically modified organisms, had already approved the trials and rated them as posing a ‘negligible’ risk to humans or the environment.
The wheat crop had been engineered to have a lower glycaemic index and higher fibre content. CSIRO chief director of Plant Industries Jeremy Burdon told ABC news the attack was “a setback to an important global food security program”.
CSIRO, it should be noted, is a government body funded to carry out scientific research not for private profit, but for public benefit. It's not Monsanto.
More here:
Greenpeace has been slammed for falsely accusing the Federal government of negligence in approving genetically modified (GM) wheat trials.
The claims were made in a report released by Greenpeace last week titled, Australia's wheat scandal: The biotech takeover of our daily bread.
Critics castigated the report, saying Greenpeace failed to consult with senior members of the grains industry in compiling the misleading document.
They also suggested it was designed to sabotage the development and uptake of Genetically Modified wheat and “irresponsibly create fear and undertake scaremongering” surrounding the new technology, which is seven to ten years away from commercialisation.
“To those who do not have an understanding of the history or workings of the Australian grains industry the report would appear credible,” Agrifood Awareness Australia CEO, Paula Fitzgerald said.
In making claims against the CSIRO, which is currently conducting GM wheat trials according to strict oversight conditions, Greenpeace anti-GM campaigner, Laura Kelly, said “Our national science body is being used to advance the corporate and political agenda of foreign biotech companies”.
Which comment, apart from sounding disturbingly reminiscent of certain older and all-too-familiar paranoid fantasies about foreign contamination, isn't true.
Worth bearing in mind maybe next time some Greenpeace activist tries to solicit your money.
Mick Hartley 
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