Here, there are no credibly conflicting studies, no arguments about the validity of computer models, no disruption of an ecosystem nor any adverse human health or even digestive problems, after 5 billion acres have been cultivated cumulatively and trillions of meals consumed.

And yet a concerted, deep-pockets campaign, as relentless as it is baseless, has persuaded a high percentage of Americans and Europeans to avoid GMO products, and to pay premium prices for “non-GMO” or “organic” foods that may in some cases be less safe and less nutritious.

Instead, we hear demands that developing countries forgo the products that offer them the best hope of joining the well-fed, affluent world. In the words of a gullible former Zambian president, “We would rather starve than get something toxic.” Marie Antoinette couldn’t have said it better.

It’s time to move the argument to a new plane. For the rich and well-fed to deny Africans, Asians or South Americans the benefits of modern technology is not merely anti-scientific. It’s cruel, it’s heartless, it’s inhumane

Once they were given access to the protocol negotiation process, anti-GM organizations such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth International, and the Third World Network spread scare stories about the risks GMOs and advocated that the new Protocol be modeled around a 1989 Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes.