UK Food Standards Agency Accused of "Stalinist" Practices

You might recall Message #1348, where I suggested that the UK's Food Standards Agency is operating under the influence of food lobbies. Now it seems I am not the only one who calls into question the agency's ties to industry.

For several years, U.S. companies were illegally exporting a particular strain of genetically modified (GM) corn into Europe. When the banned corn was discovered by the scientific magazine Nature, the Food Standards Agency first denied the crop's presence, then refused to track it down.

After much stalling on the part of the agency, an environmental group finally received documents related to this situation through a Freedom of Information Act request. However, according to the environmental group, relevant portions of the documents were blanked out and "heavily censored in a manner that would have done credit to Stalinist Russia."

(Reference: Geoffrey Lean, writing in The Independent)

- Jon Herring
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This article appears courtesy of Early to Rise [Issue #1462, 07-09-05], the Internet's most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com/.