November 29, 2006
Environmentalists Say: Let My People Go ... Hungry
More appalling news from Africa: The anti-technology environmentalists (or, as one author calls them, eco-imperialists) at Friends of the Earth (FoE) held press conferences Monday in Ghana and Sierra Leone denouncing the presence of genetically modified (GM) rice in food aid shipments. Recently seen pressuring the chronically underfed nation of Zambia to refuse food aid shipments because they contained internationally approved GM foods, FoE's latest escapade involves histrionics over GM rice that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has declared safe. One FoE campaigner complained: "We are a nation just recovering from years of civil war and now to attack us in this manner is now making our people once more vulnerable."
We're not the only folks out there mocking the "better dead than fed" attitudes of too many environmentalists. Yesterday the editors of Investor's Business Daily issued a stinging retort to scientifically challenged activists who would say to the world's poor, "Let Them Eat Cake":
Would environmentalists rather let the hungry in Africa starve than give up their goal of eradicating genetically modified foods?
Wish we didn't have to ask such a question. But how could we not after hearing the latest demands from the Friends of the Earth?
IBD was even more scathing in pointing to the very human cost of anti-biotech campaigns:
No environmentalist can point to a single person who's been killed or even injured by a genetically modified food. Yet the entire world knows Africans die in large numbers due to starvation from famine, despotic governments and other preventable complications. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, 34% of the population - 194 million people - reportedly goes hungry every day.
Friends of the Earth? Maybe. Friends of Africans? Not a chance. If they were, they wouldn't do something so morally reprehensible.
