Chief Scientific Officer in Ireland Accused of GMO Cover-up

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2091-1879931,00.html

GM-free Ireland Network, http://www.gmfreeireland.org/

Dr. Barry McSweeney, the Chief Scientific Officer of Ireland who used a fake PhD to obtain his job, attempted to cover-up an official EU study on the risks of GMO crops in 2002.

Before assuming his current post in 2004, Dr. McSweeney was CEO of the EU Joint Research Centre. While head of that organisation, McSweeney attempted to suppress the publication of the EC's official "Scenarios for Co-existence" report on the feasibility of introducing GM crops in EU member states.

The European Commission ordered the study in May 2000 from the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, which is a branch of the European Union Joint Research Centre.

The study concludes that GM crops inevitably contaminate conventional and organic crops and may cause 40% higher production costs for EU farmers. It states that all farmers would face high additional, in some cases unsustainable costs of production if genetically modified crops were commercially grown in a large scale in Europe (1).

Mr McSweeney wrote to the EC recommending that the report should not be made public, stating "given the sensitivity of the issue, I would suggest that the report be kept for internal use within the Commission only." (2).

The study was delivered to the European Commission in January 2002. Greenpeace released the leaked document on May 16 2002. In recent days it emerged that McSweeney bought his PhD from the so-called Pacific Western University, an online institution which US authorities describe as a "diploma mill".

McSweeney's ties to the biotech industry include being a former Director of BioResearch Ireland and Biocon Biochemicals. When McSweeney was head of the EC Joint Research Centre, Ireland played a leading role in legalising the first GMO crops in Europe, especially when our country held the EU Presidency in 2004. The Irish EU President Pat Cox repeatedly denied the existence of any scientific evidence of GMO health and environmental risks.

Just before leaving office in late 2004, the Irish EU Health and Consumer Affairs Commissioner David Byrne ended the de facto moratorium on GM crops by legalising 17 varieties of Monsanto GM maize, to the fury of other EU governments.

Ireland's role as biotech industry stooge continues as the EPA still denies the evidence that GMO crops will inevitably contaminate related species if introduced here. The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) claims GMO food is safe, despite the absence of any long-term health studies (3) to prove that this is so, and mounting scientific evidence to the contrary, including reports which Monsanto refuses to make public (4).

The CEO of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, Dr. John O'Brien is a former Director of a biotech & tobacco industry front organisation called the International Life Sciences Institute based in Washington, DC and of its European branch based in Paris. Its corporate donors include British Sugar Plc, Burger King, Coca-Cola, Interbrew, Mars, Nestle, and Pepsi-Co. The UK based Corporate Watch organisation reported that this lobby group infiltrated the scientific committees of the World Health Organisation and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in order to downgrade tobacco health warnings and downplay the evidence that high levels of sugar in junk foods cause childhood obesity and diabetes (5).

GM-free Ireland Network co-ordinator Michael O'Callaghan said "the time has come to purge the Irish regulatory bodies of people with current or past links to the biotech industry, in order to salvage our reputation as the clean green food island" (6).