"Whose Safety Rules? Whose Standards?"

Dr. Vandana Shiva examined the particulars of the 2005 Food Safety and Standards Bill in India in a recent article. She expresses worries about pesticides and processing, nutrition and biodiversity, GMOs and Monsanto, among other artifacts of industrial food production:

There is no reference in the objectives to most distinctive aspects of India’s food systems – indigenous science, cultural diversity and economic livelihoods in local food provisioning. Ninety nine per cent of India’s food is processed naturally and locally for local consumption and sale. Our science of food is based on Ayurveda, not the reductionist science which has treated unhealthy food as safe. This “free economy” that serves local community is governed by community control, and local culture, is now to be regulated by the centralized rules and standards appropriate for a 1% industrialized large scale manufacture. The “integrated Food Law” is a law to dismantle our diverse, decentralized food economy.

Also examined are the effects of our globalized food system on disease spread in humans and plants and other biosafety issues. Full text at Infoserve, which has recently posted a lot of GMO news from around the world.