Fortsätt till huvudinnehåll

UK to abandon EU standards shock horror

I got this from a former neighbour who for ten years has worked for the European Food Safety Authority – a tax-free appointment 
In the news: “Today’s Politico Morning Agri & Food covers the post-Brexit farming plan that the UK government presented yesterday. According to plans, UK will no longer be part of the European Food Safety Authority, which regulates the active substances that make pesticides work using the so-called precautionary principle, which obliges policymakers to err on the side of caution when the potential hazards are serious, even if the supporting evidence is incomplete or speculative. Pesticides regulation will be taken over by the U.K.’s Health and Safety Executive; UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson also trumpeted a ‘liberation’ from EU rules holding back the use of genetically modified crops.”
It seems that some people are blinded by the EU faith. My reply was “Job opportunities for you. Keep an eye on the appointments adverts. Where will they be based?”

The EFSA still has not banned glyphosate, and are unlikely to, seeing that Monsanto has been taken over by Bayer, the German company which was part of the giant IG Farben industrial and pharmaceutical chemicals group. It employed slave labour at Auschwitz during the war, conducted horrible and often fatal medical experiments on concentration camp inmates, and has always refused to pay compensation to its victims. The EFSA still permits a load of E-number substances which are known to be harmful. They are so widespread that it is hard to avoid some of them, including sodium and potassium nitrate and nitrite, and some colouring – which are banned in the USA. The EU's blanket ban against GM is ludicrous. People have been eating GM crops for 8,000 years. Whether a GM is good or bad depends on the GM. If it enables farmers to drench their crops in poisonous chemicals, then of course it is bad. If it results in improved flavours, or removes a natural poison from a plant, then GM is an excellent thing.

An interesting thing about the EFSA is that it employs only EU citizens. If the leading expert in the field is an American, or Chinese, or Japanese or Russian or Israeli, they will not be engaged. Whose interest are they working for?

Kommentarer

Skicka en kommentar

Populära inlägg i den här bloggen

Importing people to sustain demand

I got involved in a discussion with a Youtuber called “Philosophy all along”. This was in connection with criticism of Trump’s policy of deporting illegal migrants, which he argued would be bad for the economy as it would reduce demand. This implies that there is a need to import people to sustain demand. There is no obvious reason why a population should not be able to consume everything that the same population produces. If it can not, then something else is going on. It is a basic principle that wages are the least that workers will accept to do a job. Wages are a share of the value added by workers through their wages. The remainder is distributed as economic rent, after government has taken its cut in taxes. Monopoly profit is a temporary surplus that after a delay gets absorbed into economic rent. Land values in Silicon Valley are an example of this; it's like a gold rush. The miners get little out of it. Rent and tax syphon purchasing power away from those who produce the g...
Skicka en kommentar
Läs mer

The Zombie Train that refuses to die

The Guardian has published a couple more articles against HS2, one by specialist rail commentator Christian Wolmar, and another today by journalist Simon Jenkins. The main arguments in favour will doubtless be wheeled out by the commentators: the need for capacity and the disruption caused by upgrading existing routes. HST itself will severely disrupt services to Euston during the construction period. Capacity can be increased at a fraction of the cost by a variety of measures, provided that it is accepted that the additional traffic will run at existing speeds. It is not generally known that the Midland main line is, or was, four track all the way from London to Trent Junction, between Nottingham and Derby. This is because the additional tracks are separate, having been added for coal trains which trundled down to Brent sidings, on the edge of London, from a collection point at Toton in Nottinghamshire, where the Midland Railway build a huge marshalling yard. Beyond Derby, the main l...
Skicka en kommentar
Läs mer

How much more will the British tolerate?

The British are phlegmatic, tolerant and slow to rouse. Thus there was no great reaction after the terrorist attack in July 2005. The murder of Lee Rigby created a sense of outrage, but nothing more, since it appeared to be an isolated incident. Two serious incidents within a fortnight are another matter. Since the first major terrorist incident in 2001, authority has tried to persuade the public that Islam is a religion of peace, that these were isolated events, or the actions of deranged "lone wolves", having nothing to do with Islam, or to reassure that the chances of being killed in a terrorist attack were infinitesimally small. These assurances are are beginning to wear thin. They no longer convince. If government does not act effectively, people will take the law into their own hands. What, however, would effective action look like? What sort of effective action would not amount to rough justice for a lot of innocent people? Given the difficulties of keeping large n...
Skicka en kommentar
Läs mer