Greenpeace only has scare tactics against GMOs

By: Rich Keller, Editor
June 25, 2012

SACRAMENTO, Calif.—Environmental activists scare the world’s population against biotechnology based on fiction, said Patrick Moore, Ph.D., a founder of Greenpeace and current Chair and Chief Scientist of Greenspirit Strategies. When he left Greenpeace, he was the last of the original scientists who established what originally was a non-profit ecology organization.

He is author of Trees are the Answer and Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout. He explained Greenpeace had been taken over by political scientists and not environmental scientists or science-trained ecologists.

“My only choice was to go off on my own and be an independent environmentalist and try to develop an environmental policy platform based on science and logic as I saw it,” said in a presentation to media where Moore’s presentation was sponsored by the Novozymes company.

Moore suggested that In many countries, using Brazil as an example, where farmers overwhelming want to grow biotech crops is where biotech crops are eventually being approved. But there are so many scare tactics used that confuse uneducated farmers in undeveloped countries, and even educated consumers not familiar with the truth about biotech agricultural crop production.

Greenpeace’s campaign against genetically modified crops is based on nothing tangible, said Moore. “So, the campaign is basically that genetically modified foods result in reduced use of pesticides, reduced soil erosion, increased productivity, improved healthy nutrition, no known damage to anything; so, let’s ban it. It is based solely on superstition. There is no basis to do it.”

Science fiction writing or B-horror movies about the tomato that ate the world or similar stupid topics actually seem believed. Moore said this fiction has helped Greenpeace accomplish scaring people. “What they did was very cleverly apply scary works that come from fiction to new foods and crops. And they’ve gotten away with it, so far, because there are all these people who are fighting against biotech even though it is one of the most important inventions in human history.”