Genetically Modified Food

Introduce a similar healthy eating scheme (a suitable healthy menu, a list of rewards to encourage children to eat well). Present your suggestions to the rest of the class. Have a class vote on the best healthy6 eating scheme.

Choose the best answer and prove your choice.

Under the Glasgow scheme …….

(a) only meals eaten on the school premises earn points;

(b) every pupil is forced to have a swipecard;

(c) the iPods ans Xboxes available are of poor quality.

The Vital Mix option…..

(a) earns you 15 points;

(b) is the least popular thing on the menu;

(c) includes soup, bread and yoghurt.

The healthy eating scheme….

(a) was piloted in five schools;

(b) operates in all Glasgow’s primary schools;

(c) costs the council ₤40,000 a year.

Steven Purcell….

(a) wants to give children incentives to eat well;

(b) says it will be easy to change the way children eat;

(c) thinks Glasgow has a good health record.

5) Discuss the following:

What do you think of the Glasgow “healthy eating” scheme?

Would you eat 100 healthy school meals to get an iPod or an Xbox?

Is junk food really bad? Or is it a tasty, fun alternative to healthy food? Why is junk food so popular?

Should junk food companies be allowed to advertise near schools or during television programmes watched by children?

What is your favourite food? Why do you like it so much?

What do you know about genetically modified food?

Is it a good thing, do you think?

Are there any dangers?

1) Read the text below to find out about one writer’ opinion.

2) Find the words or phrases in the text which match the definitions below:

at the centre of, matter on which opinion is divided, harmless, animals that are kept on a farm, insubstantial (not believable), evidence that makes you think something may have happened, coming to a large amount, which cannot be changed, numerous, exterminate.

I wonder if politicians really knew what they were doing when they put the so-called “precautionary principle” at the heart of European environmental decision - making? You don’t hear much about it in the media, but it looms larger and larger on a host of controversial issues which Europe is wrestling with today.

In essence, the precautionary principle is simple. What it says is that the lack of the usual level of scientific proof (clear evidence of some “cause and effect” link, for example) shouldn’t necessarily be a reason for politicians to do nothing if there seems to be a real threat of serious or potentially irreversible damage to the environment – or indeed, to human health.

Sounds innocuous, doesn’t it? Bu the knock-on impact can be huge, as both agriculture and environment ministers are beginning to discover. Back to December, for example, Europe’s agriculture ministers took the wise decision to ban four of the most commonly used antibiotics as “growth promoters” in the UK. It’s not well-known that pigs, poultry and even cattle are getting antibiotics in their feed on a daily basis, both to make them grow faster and in an attempt to control some of the diseases to have been made so much worse by intensive livestock production systems.

Indeed, as a report from the Soil Association has just demonstrated, total use in farming is higher than for human medicines – and many of the drugs used in agriculture are the same as those used to save people’s lives. The fear is that traces of the antibiotics, passed on through the meat that people eat, could increase human resistance to medicines containing those drugs.

Yet in all honesty, the level of hard-edged, rock-solid evidence proving this connection is as yet pretty flimsy, though the Soil Association rightly points out that there is more and more circumstantial evidence to hand that cannot be ignored. So the December ban was introduced on a precautionary basis. And the pharmaceutical companies (who will lose out to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds) don’t like it one little bit, instantly threatening legal action against the European Commission on the grounds that it “Had not followed established procedures and has disregarded scientific analysis.” If it comes to court, that will be one of the first major tests of the legal basis for the precautionary principle.

So just imagine how much more complicated it all gets when politicians try to use the precautionary principle in their deliberations about the release of genetically modified (GM) organisms into the environment. Though the US has permitted the widespread use of GM crops such a maize, soya and cotton for several years, things have moved more slowly here in Europe. Most countries are seeking either a ban or a moratorium on the commercial use of GM crops, often claiming that the scientific information available to them is simply not enough to justify their widespread use. But the test, of course, has to be the threat of serious or potentially irreversible damage to the environment or human health. Does that stack up when looking at GM soya or GM maize – the two crops that agro-chemical companies are most anxious to introduce?

Part of the problem is that most of the data comes from the companies themselves. And most people (including Government ministers) are just a tad suspicious as slick PR machines churn out the standard reassurances that there is zero risk to the environment. The RSPB (the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds), for example, has spent the past 18 months raising questions about the impact of GM crops on biological diversity, arguing that it is “probable” that their use will result in further declines in wildlife and farmland birds in particular. Their concerns are legion. Crops engineered to resist broad-spectrum weedkillers permit every other plant in the field to be wiped out – leading to fewer plants, fewer seeds and fewer insects on which farmland birds can feed. Insect-resistant crops are modified to produce their own insecticides to kill bugs – but the trouble is that they sometimes kill the good guys as well as the bad guys. Crops modified to resist weeds, insects or diseases may remove the need for crop rotations, which are crucial to protecting biological diversity.

The truth is there is still so much we don’t yet have the first clue about. The gene experts tell us there is nothing to worry about. Environmentalists say there is plenty to worry about. Consumers are confused, and politicians are stuck in the middle of a minefield that gets bigger and more dangerous by the day. Wheel on the precautionary principle!

from an article by J. Porritt in the BBC Wildlife Magazine

Дата добавления: 2014-12-29