The world according to the Vatican ... Grow more GM crops!

“We didn’t invite a bunch of naysayers to the table, who are convinced that GMOs don’t work or who are going to make fallacious scientific arguments that have been rejected by the bulk of the scientific community and by the regulators who approved them,” said Bruce Chassy, a food safety expert at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“This is not a ‘balanced’ meeting, in the sense that you bring every point of view to the table and seek some kind of idiotic consensus,”

Originally posted by schrodingers dog
. . .
Have more children and feed them with GM crops!

Originally posted by Kailassa

Originally posted by schrodingers dog
. . .
Have more children and feed them with GM crops!

I misread this at first as:
"Have more children and feed them to GM crops!"

While the Pontifical Academy for Sciences discussed the pros of genetically modified organisms on Monday, Columban Missionary Fr. Sean McDonagh was across Rome making the case for the "con" point of view. McDonagh organized a small demonstration near the Piazza del Popolo, which was joined by a few left-of-center political movements in Italy. A large banner read, "No to GMOs, yes to food security," and a smaller sign addressed the Vatican gathering: "Pontifical Academy of Sciences, do not ally with those who, promoting GMOs, contribute to hunger in the world. Listen to the words of the Holy Father!" A well-known writer on environmental themes, McDonagh is a veteran Irish missionary who spent more than 20 years in the Philippines. He's an outspoken critic of GMOs; in 2003, he published Patenting Life? Stop! Is Corporate Greed Forcing us to Eat Genetically Engineered Food? McDonagh spoke to NCR on the margins of the demonstration.

The Holy See reports that the Vatican ran a deficit in 2007, hurt by the weak dollar affecting the value of generous collection baskets from U.S. faithful and by steep costs of running its media. The Vatican issued financial figures showing a nearly $13.5 million US deficit last year. It cited the sharp drop in the exchange rate for the U.S. dollar. The Vatican pays many of its expenses in euros, a currency that has soared against the U.S. dollar. The financial report, released by the Holy See's press office, listed revenues of $371.97 million against expenses of $386.27 million.

Tel Aviv (AsiaNews) - The Chief Tax Collector at Israel's Finance Ministry, Yehezkel Abrahamoff, has notified institutions of the Catholic Church in Israel that he has seized their funds, in order to force them to submit at once to all of the fiscal demands that he considers applicable to them, ahead of the Agreement on the fiscal status of the Church, which is being negotiate, among other things, between the Holy See and the State of Israel.