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NANOTECHNOLOGY THE NEW THREAT FOOD Hundreds of foods on the supermarket shelves may now contain untested and unlabelled nanotechnology ingredients, yet consumers are none the wiser. The new assault on holistic agriculture ollowing on from genetic engineering, nanotechnology represents the latest high-technology attempt to infiltrate our food supply. Senior scientists have warned that nanotechnology —the manipulation of matter at the scale of atoms and molecules— introduces serious new risks to human and environmental health. Yet in the absence of public debate or oversight from regulators, unlabelled foods manufactured using nanotechnology have begun to appear on our supermarket shelves. Around the world there is an increased interest in our food, health and environment. We want to know where, how, why and by whom products are produced, how far they have travelled and how long they have been stored. The organic and local food movements have emerged as an intuitive and practical response to the increasing use of chemicals in food production and to the growing alienation of industrial agribusiness from holistic agricultural systems. People have chosen to eat organic foods because they care about the health of their families and the health of the environment. Organic agriculture also enables people to support integrated, environmentally friendly agriculture and appropriate technology rather than chemical-intensive factory farming. Support for organics has also grown as a direct response to biotechnology giants! efforts to genetically engineer our food crops. Farmers and food buyers around the world were, and continue to be, enraged by the introduction of genetically engineered food crops. For many, the inevitable conclusion was that whereas the biotechnology companies stood to benefit from the entry of genetically engineered foods into the food chain, consumers, farmers and the environment shouldered all the risks. Now, nanotechnology introduces a new wave of assaults on our foods. Nanotechnology is the high-technology, atomically processed antithesis of organic agriculture, which values the natural, health-giving properties of fresh, unprocessed wholefoods. It further transforms the farm into an automated extension of the high-technology factory production line, using patented products that will inevitably concentrate corporate control. It also introduces serious new risks for human health and the environment. shelves may now contain untested and unlabelled nanotechnology ingredients, yet consumers are none the wiser. Introduction to nanotechnology: what is it, and why is it different? Nanotechnology is a powerful new technology for taking apart and reconstructing nature at the atomic and molecular levels. Nanotechnology embodies the dream that scientists can remake the world from the atom up, using atomic-level manipulation to transform and construct a wide range of new materials, devices, living organisms and technological systems. Nanotechnology and nanoscience involve the study of phenomena and materials and the manipulation of structures, devices and systems that exist at the nanoscale, i.e., less than 100 nanometres (nm) in size. To put 100 nm in by Georgia Miller and Scott Kinnear © 2007 From the web page: http://nano.foe.org.au/node/198 NEXUS ¢ 37 DECEMBER 2008 — JANUARY 2009 www.nexusmagazine.com