"Last year we had one million acres of soya world wide, this year 8-10 million. The acreage is only limited by the seed availability."
The above statement was made by a leading agrochemical company, Monsanto.
Their spokesman was not talking about ordinary soya however. She was boasting about their sales of genetically modified soya seed.
The agrochemical companies are putting the same sales development effort into genetically modified strains of maize, wheat, rice and oil seed rape - the basic staples of the world food chain. Not far behind are genetically modified versions of fresh fruit and vegetables, such as tomatoes and apples.
And this isn't something which may or may not happen sometime in the distant future. MAFF (Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food) has already sanctioned the first UK crop plantings which could go ahead in the next few months. Once this trend gathers pace it will become very difficult to stop.
There is now no doubt whatever that the major agrochemical companies are determined to control as many stages of crop production as possible - research and development, sale of seeds, sale of fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides, in fact the total process from laboratory to harvest.
They are now literally planning exactly what choice you and I will have over what we eat.
The plan is that there will be no choice. They will engineer and control the sale of the seeds of all foods which form our basic diet. Even organic agriculture may not remain untainted. For instance, through cross pollination from say, a field of genetically modified rape, the altered genes could spread to organic plants anywhere in the vicinity.
The risk to organic growers from genetic pollution is just one of the many serious threats posed by the drive for market control and domination by the genetically modified seed producers.
Action is now needed. The Soil Association is mounting a campaign to prevent genetic engineering taking a foothold in this country, as one of their top priorities in 1998. Join them, write to MP's, MAFF and all major supermarkets.
Iceland has already announced that its own label products will cease to contain GMO's. The rest do not seem to be taking the problem seriously. They need to be made to realise that we care, and wish food to be clearly labelled and give us a choice.
Article written by Maggie of East Riding Vegans using information supplied by the Soil Association.
The Soil Association can be contacted at:
Soil Association, 86 Colston Street, Bristol, BS1 5BB. Tel 0117 929 0661