Ministers' obsession with pushing GM crops into the UK ignores the problems and lack of benefits associated with them, writes Geoffrey Lean of The Telegraph.
EXCERPT: This drive – the Eurosceptical Mr Paterson might be discomfited to know – goes back to a couple of secret meetings of EU prime ministerial representatives, called six years ago by the European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, which decided to “speed up” the spread of GM and “deal with” public opposition.
But, despite the resulting efforts, little has changed since then. The disadvantages of GM crops remain. Comprehensive government tests have shown that growing them harms wildlife, while superweeds have developed and spread. And in the absence of sufficient good studies, health concerns remain unanswered.
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New push for GM, but its problems are not yet solved
Geoffrey Lean
The Telegraph, 15 MAR 2014
Here we go again. For the umpteenth time, ministers and the scientific establishment are launching a determined push to persuade wary British consumers to stop worrying and learn to love GM.
Five plant scientists yesterday published a report for the Council for Science and Technology, which advises the Prime Minister, calling for regulations to be relaxed to make it easier to grow modified crops. Sir Mark Walport, the chief scientific adviser, has leapt on the opportunity to warn that if we don’t use GM, “people will go unfed”. And Owen Paterson, the controversial Environment Secretary, seems to want them to be cultivated in Britain soon.
This drive – the Eurosceptical Mr Paterson might be discomfited to know – goes back to a couple of secret meetings of EU prime ministerial representatives, called six years ago by the European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, which decided to “speed up” the spread of GM and “deal with” public opposition.
But, despite the resulting efforts, little has changed since then. The disadvantages of GM crops remain. Comprehensive government tests have shown that growing them harms wildlife, while superweeds have developed and spread. And in the absence of sufficient good studies, health concerns remain unanswered.
For those who – unlike the Prince of Wales – do not reject the technology on principle, the issue is whether its benefits outweigh the risks. And that, too, remains unclear. Sir Mark is right to warn that full supermarket shelves conceal worrying vulnerabilities in world food supplies but, as he must surely be aware, current GM crops will not help solve them. They do not increase yields significantly, nor are they designed to do so. The only ones ready to be grown commercially in Britain and Europe are merely modified to resist applications of pesticides, usually provided by the very companies that produced them. They thus only really benefit the GM giants’ bottom lines – one reason why a canny public has been so reluctant to embrace them. And most modified crops grown around the world go to feed not people, but animals, and produce biofuels.
Huge advances are certainly being made though biotechnology. New crops that vastly increase yields and offer a real prospect of reducing hunger are coming on line all the time. Nerica rice varieties, for example, are up to four times as productive as traditional ones, and contain more protein. And earlier this year the African Agricultural Technology Foundation released 10 varieties of drought-resistant maize. But all have been developed using new conventional, not GM, techniques.
It may be that GM will eventually produce similarly promising commercial crops, but in truth it is looking increasingly as if its time has passed. Indeed it may be that an obsession with this one controversial technology may divert attention and resources from those that are really delivering.
The companies’ motives are clear enough. But are their scientific and political champions primarily interested in feeding the world, or in trying to persuade it that they have been right all along about GM?