Gouden rijst – Greenpeace beschuldigd van misdaden tegen de mensheid

Gouden rijst kan jaarlijks miljoenen doden voorkomen.

Onder de titel, 'When environmentalism becomes a crime against humanity', schreef Ivo Vegter voor de 'Daily Maverick':

These are strong words, but they’re no exaggeration. By whipping up groundless fears about genetically engineered foods and misinforming governments in developing countries, Greenpeace and other anti–GMO lobby groups are condemning millions of people to easily preventable malnutrition and death.

Patrick Moore, a co–founder and former member of Greenpeace, has accused the environmental group of crimes against humanity over its opposition to Golden Rice, a genetically–modified variety that fortifies rice with vitamin A.

“They [Greenpeace] are wealthy Westerners flying in jets around the world telling other people to stop using fossil fuels,” he writes in an email to me. “They are well fed and they would deny a healthy diet to millions of poor children. They are guilty of a crime against humanity as defined by the International Criminal Court as they are ‘knowingly contributing to the suffering and death of civilian populations’.”

Moore left the organisation in 1986 because he felt it had largely achieved its purpose of raising environmental awareness, and it was starting to over-reach in its campaigns. He has since often spoken up about what he sees as the group’s growing environmental extremism. ….

“It is a testament to Greenpeace’s heartlessness that they could turn a blind eye to the millions of poor parents who watch helplessly as their children go blind and die before their eyes,” Moore says. “Greenpeace has lost the ‘peace’ in its name and is now only concerned with the ill–defined ‘green’ which apparently excludes the welfare of children.” ….

Ook Owen Paterson, voormalig Brits minister voor milieu, voedsel en plattelandsontwikkeling, heeft zich kritisch over Greenpeace uitgelaten:

In his impassioned defence of agricultural biotechnology, Paterson said, “Not since the original Luddites smashed cotton mill machinery in early 19th century England, have we seen such an organised, fanatical antagonism to progress and science.”

Vegter concludeert:

… disinformation about biotechnology, spread by anti–GMO groups, is not just a fashionable quirk of elitist snobs, which only matters to people who insist on peasant–grown organic Roma tomatoes. These lies actively harm or kill millions of people in the developing world. Anyone who supports these groups is complicit.

By opposing the scientific means by which these deaths can be avoided, environmental extremists are imposing a kind of medieval iniquity upon the world, in which witches are burnt for interfering with nature and the deaths of children must be accepted as the will of an angered god. And they call this “progressive”.

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