Why Would the Irish Protest Famine-Proof Potatoes?
AgBioView, March 6, 2006. By Dennis T. Avery [Note: Mr. Avery is a US corporate lobbyist funded by Monsanto, and author of “Saving the World with Pesticides and Plastic”!] In Ireland where the 1840’s potato famine killed a million people and made millions more homeless why are hundreds of Irish men and women protesting against the new genetically engineered blight-proof potato? Can the modern Irish have forgotten the biggest disaster in their history? A million Irish men, women and children starved because the late blight disease suddenly destroyed the vital potato crop. Millions more Irish lost their homes and farms and wandered the roads, subsisting on tree bark, weeds and whatever else they could find. One million Irish emigrants boarded what became known as “coffin ship,” sailing ships too often infested with typhus and cholera, fleeing Ireland for the hope of better lives in the U.S. and Canada. Even today, Ireland is dotted with “famine cottages”– little two-room stone houses, w
