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Picking the right guys We decided to mount this opinion piece on ecoglobe's site since it contains a strong warning. We know what happened in the UK because of the denial of risk by specialists. Handpicking specialists in the UK appears to be continuing. Let's hope the new New Zealand government shows more wisdom. RBBAX@aol.com, who posted this article to the biotech_activists list, commented: An interesting little article in Private Eye No.994 (I've edited it down to the more salient details to save wear & tear on my typing finger [RBBAX@aol.com]), although it probably won't be a surprise to many : MAN IN THE EYE By Nick Whittingham When Newsnight's Jeremy Paxman recently grilled Professor Sir John Krebs, newly installed as head of the government's Food Standards Agency, about his qualifications for the job, Krebs looked mildly uncomfortable. Announcing his appointment on 21 January, the dept. of health admitted that he had little knowledge of food safety or consumer issues, having spent the last 30 years in the markedly different discipline of academic zoology. The department insisted that ignorance was actually an advantage, since it meant he had "no baggage" and "no preconceptions". ...How then, has Krebs risen to the giddy heights of the great and the good? Being the offspring of a nobel prizewinner, the biochemist Sir Hans Krebs, probably doesn't do any harm.... ... more recent notoriety as the man who proposed the government's current policy of testing whether badgers help spread boving TB by carrying out a mass badger cull. ... What of the controversial issue which he must now tackle, genetically modified nosh? On the day of his appointment, Krebs already felt able to assure Jeremy Paxman that present GM products "are as safe as their non-GM counter-products". And in a book issued last year by the right-wing Institute of Economic Affairs, he was quoted as denouncing "the recent shrill, often ill-informed and dogma-driven objections to GM foods". Can this really be the same man who, according to Whitehall, comes to his sensitive new job with "no preconceptions"? And does he have no preconceptions as to the behaviour of his old friend Sir Richard Southwood, who was chairman of the first committee that looked into the BSE crisis and said that the danger from using human vaccine containing bovine material was "remote"? [later article: ... the evidence to the Phillips enquiry into BSE from the four experts who first used the word "remote" in this context - that they had done so only to avoid panic in the mass vaccination programme planned in 1989, while in simultaneous warnings to the department of health had made clear their view that the risk from using such material in vaccines was not remote at all. ] [Source: Biotech Activists (biotech_activists@iatp.org) Posted by: RBBAX@aol.com 14 Feb 2000, originated: rasguno@netscapeonline.co.uk ] ** This material is distributed for research and educational purposes only. ** Feedback to: <welcome@ecoglobe.org.nz>

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14 February ecoglobe news 2000

link to this item http://www.ecoglobe.org.nz/news2000/news2000.htm#pick1420">