Government wants GM despite the risks

Government wants GM despite the risks

We have warned on many occasions previously how successive governments are in the pockets of the globalist bio-tech corporations. It's encouraging, therefore , to see Gordon Brown and the Government given a blunt warming about their support for genetically-modified (GM) crops and food by no less a person than the head of the Government's own countryside and wildlife agency.

In a recent letter to The Independent newspaper, Sir Martin Doughty, the chairman of Natural England, is quoted as warning against: "rushing headlong to embrace GM crops as the solution to rising food prices". Sir Martin added that they can cause harm to wildlife, and there is little evidence that the present generation of biotechnology crops will help in reconciling surging global food demand with protecting the environment. His letter comes as a timely response to the Government's reopening of the GM debate earlier this month, with ministers from Mr Brown down indicating that the time has come for Britain and Europe to relax GM restrictions in the face of the new concern about world food supplies and prices.

It was Natural England's predecessor, English Nature, which initially voiced concerns over the damage the available suite of GM crops, many specifically engineered to be tolerant of powerful weed killing chemicals, could do to wildlife on British farmland. That concern led to the official farm-scale evaluations of GM beet, oilseed rape and maize, which reported in 2003 that the weed killers used with the first two were far more damaging to wildlife than conventional herbicides. Indeed, the GM maize regime was found to be less damaging, although the conventional weed killer it was compared to, atrazine, was itself so harmful it was later banned in the EU.

English Nature's insistence upon trials has neither pleased the Government nor the Government's friends in the bio-tech industry, hoping to profit immensely from this questionable technology.

Sir Martin further warned: "We need to be mindful of the lessons of the past before rushing headlong to embrace GM crops as the solution to rising food prices. The evidence of field-based trials on GM crops previously proposed for commercial release in England demonstrates that they can have a detrimental indirect impact on farmland biodiversity."

Natural England's own policy document, Biotechnology in the Natural Environment, will be put before its board for approval on Wednesday. It says: "Because GM can be used to develop organisms with radically different properties, we are particularly concerned about potential impacts on biodiversity that could be caused by changes in crop, tree or animal husbandry."

Government determination to pollute the environment with GM products follows on from a huge reduction in farmland wildlife in the past 30 years due to the intensification of agriculture.