Pope hints at thumbs-down for GM food
October 18, 2004
Catholic Telecommunications

In a message for Saturday's World Food Day, Pope John Paul II stressed the need for biodiversity, suggesting reservations about the production of genetically modified foods.
The US Embassy to the Holy See has recently been lobbying the Pontifical Academy of Sciences to secure Vatican endorsement for GM foods. Church experts, including Irish Columban environmentalist Fr Sean McDonagh have cried foul, accusing the US Government of profiteering under the guise of fatuous claims that GM food is the solution to world hunger.
Catholic World News reports on the Pope's message, titled Biodiversity at the Service of Food Security, was addressed to Jacques Diouf, the director of the UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation.
Biological diversity, wrote the Holy Father, is needed to ensure the supply of a wide variety of foods, and also to preserve the rights of farmers engaged in widely different types of agricultural progress. He also said that that mankind has a "God-given duty of stewardship over creation", and our respect for the created world should forbid "challenges to the natural order".
"Unfortunately there are today many obstacles that are placed in the part of international action undertaken to safeguard biodiversity," the Pope writes. He calls for a proper balance between the rights of developers and those of societies, arguing that control of "the resources present in different ecosystems cannot be exclusive nor can it become a cause for conflict."
Catholic World News suggests the Pope's emphasis on preserving diverse crops, and his argument against monopoly control of different food products, "could be interpreted as cautions against an overly energetic development of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) for agricultural purposes".
Although the Vatican has indicated sympathy for GM food production as a means of alleviating food shortages, Catholic experts have argued that reliance on the technology would put control of food supplies in the hands of a few powerful corporations, and that it fails to recognise the inextricable link betweek world poverty and world hunger.

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