NANOTECHNOLOGY ADDS TO GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS

by Ken Ferguson

AS the reality of the global food crisis sparks soaring prices and fears of shortages multinational food firms are stepping up their PR drive in favour of technological manipulation of food.
Predictably we are already hearing the siren calls telling us that only the publicly rejected GM foods can close the growing food gap.
Now a heavyweight report from Friends of the Earth Australia , Europe and USA warning of the dangers of nanotechnology in food has been backed by the International Union of Food workers.
Nanotechnology involves the manipulation of natural and synthetic material at the atomic and molecular scale.
The report titled Out of the laboratory and on to our plates outlines the use of the controversial technology in food processing, agriculture and packaging.
It highlights the known and potential risks to workplace and consumer health and safety and to the environment and links these developments to corporate control of the food supply and issues of sustainability.
The risks were spelt out in 2004 by the UK Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering which said:
“There is virtually no information available about the effect of nano-particles on species other than humans or about how they behave in the air, water or soil, or about their ability to accumulate in food chains”, concluding that
“Release of nano­particles should be restricted due to the potential effects on environment and human health.”
The FoE report spotlights that the rapid expansion of the technology and calls for full regulation of the technology and warns of the current absence of regulations at all levels to deal with specific nanotechnologies.
The reports call for action closely follow those adopted by the IUF at its 2007 congress, including the call for a moratorium on the commercialisation of all food products incorporating nanotechnology until their safety can be demonstrated and nano­specific regulations to protect worker and public health and the environment are in place.
The IUF continues to draw attention to the multiple risks associated with the commercial availability of dozens of products including nano tech-based foods, food packaging, dietary supplements and pesticides.
There are currently no labelling requirements anywhere requiring the specific identification of nano materials in a product.
The union warned:
“Many thousands of workers are involved in the manufacture and handling of these products, yet there are no specific safety regimes in place.
“There currently exist no methods for even determining potential exposure levels of nano particles in the workplace.
“There is a clear need for unions to take action, together with civil society groups engaged with the same issues.”

NUS right-wing reforms stopped... for now

by Andrew Weir, SSP student organiser

FIVE SSP students - three from Edinburgh University, one from Edinburgh College of Art, and one ex-pat member now studying at Oxford - attended the conference of the National Union of Students 1-3 April in Blackpool. SSP members in the Edinburgh delegation were joined by an independent member of Edinburgh’s Socialist Society.
The conference comes after a long period of decline in student activism, and with the leadership of the NUS dominated by Labour Students and other right-wingers more interested in kow-towing to the Government than in seriously challenging it on the issues of free education and student grants.
The main item on the Conference’s agenda was ratification of the so-called “Governance Review” - an attempt to completely overhaul NUS’s internal democracy, replacing the whole of the NUS’s constitution and rules.
This ‘review’ was supported by most of the leadership of NUS, and it isn’t hard to see why - it would have removed the majority of decision-making power from Annual Conference, which would have been re-christened ‘Congress’ and billed as “a celebration of NUS’s achievements in the past year”.
It would also have introduced non-student members onto the union’s Executive.
Essentially, it would have greatly reduced the ability of ordinary students to get involved in their national union - so, naturally, Labour Student doublespeak hailed it as the way to bring the NUS closer to “real students” (the phrase “making the NUS relevant to real students” appeared very often during the debate -presumably as opposed to making it relevant to all these pretendy students there are around the place).
Democracy in the NUS is already pretty limited ­Conferences have been repeatedly cut in length over the past twenty years, and there is never enough time to discuss all the business and hold the executive of the union fully to account.
The left in NUS, notoriously fractious, was therefore united in its opposition to this Review ­and this unity brought results.
The Review required a two-thirds majority to pass conference - but received 65 per cent of the vote.
This result caused furore in the Conference hall among Labour Student delegates, who were convinced that they had it in the bag.
The socialist delegates from Edinburgh University, despite standing and winning on manifestos stating that they would vote against the Governance Review, had been mandated by their student association to vote for the review - a mandate which we broke.
This led to a shameful attempt by the Edinburgh University student president -surprise surprise, a Labour Student -to confiscate our credentials and voting cards: that’s what the face of “democratic reform” looked like in the Edinburgh delegation!
There was no humility in defeat either -with the President-elect of NUS, Wes Streeting (yes, another Labour Student), saying to the Left, “bring it on - we’ll be bringing this back next year”.
The fight for genuine democracy in the NUS will obviously have to continue long after this conference.
Elsewhere, results were disappointing for the left. Voice readers may have noticed headlines in the national press along the lines of “Students drop opposition to fees” - well, some of us haven’t; but unfortunately this was indeed the majority point of view among delegates to NUS conference, in the name of being “pragmatic” and “recognising that the nature of the debate has changed”.
The entirety of NUS’s vision is now focused on “keeping the cap” on tuition fees in the 2009 review of university funding ó not a slogan we can expect to get students out on the streets campaigning and protesting.
The left also lost the vote on a motion calling for opposition to military recruitment on campuses, although a motion calling for opposition to any potential war in Iran passed.
The left was also unable to defeat a motion supporting the Government’s plans to extend the age of compulsory education to 18.
The left’s argument that while opportunities for further education should be open to all, no young person should be compelled to stay in education if they choose not to, fell on deaf ears at Conference.
Election results were also not great for the left.
The NUS’s full-time officers remain Labour or allies, while in the election for the twelve part-time executive members the left went from three seats to two (both members of Student Respect) - although another left candidate, Heather Shaw of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and the Education Not for Sale network, lost out on a seat by the narrowest of margins.
Despite these negative results for the left, after the defeat of the Governance Review there still remains space for socialist students to organise within the NUS.
Most left-wing student groups can manage to get at least a couple of delegates elected to the conference; the most substantial and visible are Student Respect (linked to the SWP) and the Education Not for Sale network (ENS). SSP delegates, already having been in contact with members of ENS, spent most of their time working with this group, although this was an informal arr angement.
Although those are the principal ones, there are a bewildering number of left-wing student groups in the NUS; now, more than ever, the student left needs to unite to reclaim our national union to be a genuine campaigning organisation rather than a training ground for future Cabinet ministers.