"We strongly object that the image of the poor and hungry from our countries is being used by giant multinational corporations to push a technology that is neither safe, environmentally friendly nor economically beneficial to us. On the contrary, we think it will destroy the diversity, the local knowledge and the sustainable agricultural systems that our farmers have developed for millennia and that it will thus undermine our capacity to feed ourselves."

Delegates from 20 African countries to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN conference on Plant Genetic Resources, 1998

"I'm against the theory of the multinational corporations who say if you are against hunger you must be for GMO. That's wrong, there is plenty of natural, normal good food in the world to nourish the double of humanity. There is absolutely no justification to produce genetically modified food except the profit motive and the domination of the multinational corporations."

Jean Ziegler, UN human rights envoy and special investigator on the right to food, “U.N. food envoy questions safety of gene crops”, Reuters, 15 Oct 2002  

"Seeking a technological food fix for world hunger may be the most commercially malevolent wild goose chase of the new century."

Dr Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet

"I don't think any of us would disagree that, if an alternative exists to a GE solution, it's to be preferred."

Mr Hodson QC, acting on behalf of the Life Sciences Network at the New Zealand Royal Commission on Genetic Modification, 8 Feb 2001

"The poor and hungry need low-cost, readily available technologies and practices to increase food production."

New Scientist editorial, 3 February 2001

"Low-tech 'sustainable agriculture’, shunning chemicals in favour of natural pest control and fertiliser, is pushing up crop yields on poor farms across the world, often by 70 per cent or more... The findings will make sobering reading for people convinced that only genetically modified crops can feed the planet's hungry in the 21st century."

"A new science-based revolution is gaining strength built on real research into what works best on the small farms where a billion or more of the world's hungry live and work... It is time for the major agricultural research centres and their funding agencies to join the revolution."

Professor Jules Pretty, Director of the Centre for Environment and Society, University of Essex

"Organic agricultural production based upon cheap, locally available materials and technologies provides an important alternative in the search for an environmentally sound and equitable solution to the problem of food security."

Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN

"Biotechnology and GM crops are taking us down a dangerous road, creating the classic conditions for hunger, poverty and even famine. Ownership and control concentrated in too few hands and a food supply based on too few varieties of crops planted widely are the worst option for food security."

Christian Aid report, “Biotechnology and GMOs”

"Concerning the future, for the world as a whole there is enough, or more than enough, food production potential to meet the growth of effective demand."

Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN

"History has many records of crimes against humanity, which were also justified by dominant commercial interests and governments of the day... Today, patenting of life forms and the genetic engineering which it stimulates, is being justified on the grounds that it will benefit society... But in fact, by monopolising the 'raw' biological materials, the development of other options is deliberately blocked. Farmers therefore, become totally dependent on the corporations for seeds."

Hans Herren, Director General, International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology, Kenya, winner of the World Food Prize 1995

"We already know today that most of the problems that are to be addressed via Golden Rice and other GMOs can be resolved in matter of days, with the right political will."

Nobel laureate, Prof Wangari Mathai of the Green Belt Movement, Kenya

"As compared with the challenge of controlling protein-energy malnutrition, elimination of VAD [Vitamin A Deficiency] can be achieved rapidly. The cost-effectiveness ratio is also highly favourable. It is therefore a test case of political will, and managerial capacity to implement known technologies and known solutions."

World Health Organisation, 2000

"Some Green Revolution crops are poor in vital nutrients such as calcium, iron, and vitamins C and A. But often, under-utilised crops are rich in these nutrients. One study found four African home-garden crops, leafy vegetables with twice the micronutrients of spinach."

Stefano Padulosi, International Plant Genetic Resources Institute, Rome

"It is argued that the Indian peasants in Chiapas, Mexico are backward, they produce only two tons of maize per hectare as against six on modern Mexican plantations.

"But this is only part of the picture. The modern plantation produces six tons per hectare and that’s it. But the Indian grows a mixed crop. Among his corn stalks, that also serve as support for climbing beans, he grows squash and pumpkins, sweet potatoes, tomatoes and all sorts of vegetables, fruit and medicinal herbs. From the same hectare he also feeds his cattle and chickens.

"He easily produces more than 15 tons of food per hectare and all without commercial fertilisers or pesticides and no assistance from banks or governments or transnational corporations."

José A. Lutzenberger, former Minister of the Environment for Brazil

"Bangladeshi people do not need GM food. GM food means the destruction of farmers and letting the companies take over. We need to preserve a biodiversity-based food production without the application of poisonous chemicals. Bangladeshi farmers are rejecting the idea that GM food can meet the needs of hungry people. This is nonsense. GM can feed the GREED of the companies, not the NEED of the hungry people. People are hungry not because we are not able to produce, but because the food production base is being systematically destroyed by the interventions of the profit-seeking companies. They want to make business out of our hunger!"

Farida Akhtar, UBINIG (Policy Research for Development Alternatives), Bangladesh

"Greater concentration of ownership inherent in the new technologies, and laws drawn up to protect them, is set to repeat and worsen one of the great mistakes of the green revolution. More dependence and marginalisation loom for the poorest. The inability to contain genetic material once released into the environment means that even field trials of new crops are tantamount to uncontrolled, irreversible experiments and invasions of the global commons."

Christian Aid report, “Selling Suicide: farming, false promises and genetic engineering in developing countries”

"We consider the use of the South's rural poverty to justify the monopoly control and global use of genetically modified food production by the North's transnational corporations, not only an obstructive lie, but a way of derailing the solutions to our Southern rural poverty. It is the height of cynical abuse of the corporations' position of advantage."

Joint statement signed by over 40 developing country NGOs  

"It is only too obvious to concerned scientists, farmers and citizens alike that we are about to repeat, step by step, the mistakes of the insecticide era, even before it is behind us. I would even argue that these new miracle technologies are mostly not necessary, let alone desirable, to solve the world's food security problem."

Hans R.Herren, Director General, International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology, Kenya, winner of the World Food Prize

"Biotechnology and GM crops are taking us down a dangerous road, creating the classic conditions for hunger, poverty and even famine. Ownership and control concentrated in too few hands and a food supply based on too few varieties of crops planted widely are the worst option for food security."

Christian Aid report, “Biotechnology and GMOs”

"GM is a step too far. It’s the last flowering of a discredited form of agriculture."

Donald Morton, Norfolk farmer farming 730 acres

"GM crops are not the solution to feeding the world. As a farmer, I am an environmental manager and do not see the need to start tinkering with nature when the outcome could have very serious long-term risks… We have pushed the land to the limit and GM is supposed to be the solution. This isn't true."

Henry Birkbeck, one of Norfolk's biggest landowners, farming 8,500 acres

"There are still hungry people in Ethiopia, but they are hungry because they have no money, no longer because there is no food to buy... we strongly resent the abuse of our poverty to sway the interests of the European public."

Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher of the Institute of Sustainable Development in Addis Ababa, commenting on the way pro-GM scientists try to promote GM crops through emotional blackmail, saying they are vital to feed the world

"There are 800 million hungry people in the world; 34,000 children starve to death every day. There are those who consider this a tragedy, and then there are the biotech companies and their countless PR firms, who seem to consider it a flawless hook for product branding. It is an insult of the highest and most grotesque order to turn those who live from day to day into the centerpiece of an elaborate lie. ...the companies who make [GE foods], and the flacks who hawk their falsehoods, offer us a new definition of depravity, a new standard to plunge for in our race to care least, want more, and divest ourselves of all shame."

Michael Manville, “Welcome to the Spin Machine”

The future of plant breeding lies in non-GM biotechnology

"From a scientific perspective, the public argument about genetically-modified organisms, I think, will soon be a thing of the past. The science has moved on and we're now in the genomics era."

Prof Bob Goodman, former head of research and development at Calgene, creators of the Flavr Savr tomato, the world's first GM food, Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 18 February 2001, quoted in Terry Devitt, “Genomics portends next revolution in agriculture”, University of Wisconsin-Madison News, 19 February 2001

"Biotechnology rather than genetic modification is the key to improving wheat varieties, says Monsanto. Although GM techniques may develop some traits, most will stem from conventional breeding backed by sophisticated biotech tools.

"Biotech to aid conventional wheat breeding is already attracting 10 to 20 times more effort than the [GM] genetic transformation of the crop, says US-based Tom Crosbie, Monsanto's global head of plant breeding. '[GM] Genetic transformation is just one particular wrench in the biotechnology toolbox. We have lots of other [non-GM] tools to accelerate the development of new wheat varieties,’ he says.... Genetic transformation can only be used to introduce one segment of novel genetic material to a variety at a time, but biotech tools can be used to enhance a host of existing traits. It's a numbers game and ultimately non-transformation biotech offers the greatest potential.

"Monsanto now has the best wheat breeding material in the world, Mr Crosbie claims. Biotech methods such as gene mapping and molecular markers will transform conventional breeding, effectively turning the lights on where breeders previously worked in the dark, Mr Crosbie adds. 'Aligning 20 segments of desired genetic material using conventional breeding would take a one-in-a-trillion chance. Using molecular markers we can achieve it in three cycles.'"

Charles Abel, “Wheat future is in bio-tech not GM – breeder”, Farmer's Weekly, 25 February 2000

"Our thinking needs to be focussed downstream at our markets, innovatively and laterally...[to] give us a worthwhile competitive advantage.... The possibilities are as endless as they are exciting and they are achievable with existing technologies. Within the wheat plant we have a vast reservoir of genes. We also have the advanced analytical equipment necessary to pinpoint the molecular characteristics we need. And the marker-assisted systems to reliably build these characteristics into high output varieties through conventional plant breeding."

Jeff Cox, general manager for Monsanto Northern Europe, Farmers Weekly, 30 August 2002

"Perhaps the greatest potential of biotechnologies does not come from GMOs but from genetic markers, genomics and proteomics which can complement conventional breeding strategies and enhance their efficiency."

Louise Fresco, assistant director of agriculture of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations EU Discussion Forum, “Towards Sustainable Agriculture for Developing Countries: Options from Life Sciences and Biotechnologies”, Brussels, 30–31 January 2003

"New cutting-edge technologies have made gene splicing and transgenic crops obsolete and a serious impediment to scientific progress. The new frontier is called genomics and the new agricultural technology is called marker-assisted selection (MAS). The new technology offers a sophisticated method to greatly accelerate classical breeding. A growing number of scientists believe MAS – which is already being introduced into the market – will eventually replace GM food. Moreover, environmental organisations that oppose GM crops are guardedly supportive of MAS technology.

"While MAS is emerging as a promising new agricultural technology with broad application, the limits of transgenic technology are becoming increasingly apparent. Most of the transgenic crops introduced into the fields express only two traits, resistance to pests and compatibility with herbicides, and rely on the expression of a single gene – hardly the sweeping agricultural revolution touted by the life-science companies at the beginning of the GM era.

"Not surprisingly, MAS technology is being looked at with increasing interest within the European Union, where public opposition to GM food has remained resolute. In a recent speech, Stavros Dimas, the EU's environment commissioner, noted that ‘MAS technology is attracting considerable attention’ and said that the EU ‘should not ignore the use of “upgraded” conventional varieties as an alternative to GM crops’.

"If properly used as part of a much larger systemic and holistic approach to sustainable agricultural development, MAS technology could be the right technology at the right time in history."

Jeremy Rifkin, (“This crop revolution may succeed where GM failed”, The Guardian, 26 October 2006)

"Scientists, faced with the major challenge of boosting productivity of staple crops for ensuring world’s food and nutritional security, are now looking at effectively deploying biotechnological tools to develop crops which would not be transgenics or genetically modified (GM) ones. Transgenics or GM crops, they say, have generated much controversy across the globe. It has to pass through rigorous regulatory process before commercial release and hence it’s time consuming. Rather the better option would be to deploy biotechnological tools like marker-aided selection....

"'Scientists are exploring the possibilities of deploying modern biotech tools for developing high yielding crops with high nutrition content,' director general of the International Rice Research Institute Robert S. Zeigler says. 'We have effective biotechnological tools at our disposal such as improved rice crops which would not be transgenic crops. Development of transgenic crop is only one of the many options.'"

Ashok B. Sharma, “Hiking rice yield, biotechnology to the rescue”, Indian Express, 26 October 2006