Why I'm happy To Eat GM Food

By Victor Sebestyen

An opinion poll conducted last year for the International Food Information Council asked the public in Europe and America a deliberately idiotic question: "Would you eat food that contained any genes?" They got a predictably stupid answer - two thirds said no.

It could be that respondents misunderstood and thought they were being asked about denim. More likely, they were replying honestly - and that is the big problem with the great row about GM food.

It is impossible to have a rational debate about the issue because of the hysteria raised by the mere mention of the G-word - the meaning of which few of us have the slightest inkling.

"Genetic manipulation" of this or that raises the spectre of human cloning, a master race perfected through eugenics, dangerous "Frankenstein foods", or environmental armageddon.

It is easy to see why the media - and particularly the Press - runs so big with GM scare stories.

Fuelling fear is always good for "modifying" circulation figures. Nor is it hard to see where the Luddite Tendency is coming from - in the main they are the protesters at the WTO summit in Seattle last year who object to globalisation.

They have a friend in Prince Charles - who has been known to talk to plants but can't grasp that we have been "engineering" them for millennia. Together they have turned healthy scepticism about the boasts of science into worrying doubt about the great idea of Western civilisation that progress can be made through inquiring into the world and harnessing technology.

It is more difficult to see why science has done so little to fight back. Scientists on the whole live in their own little world, find it hard to speak or write in English and have been arrogant about accepting their share of responsibility for past mistakes - the BSE episode does not inspire blind faith that they are right all the time.

They have made overblown promises of Brave New Worlds that have failed to materialise. We are still waiting for the cold-fusion nuclear power that will give us endless energy with no risk to the environment.

But it is amazing that at the beginning of the 21st century a case has to be made for the fundamentals of the scientific method, which have stood the test of time and created a world where, at least in the West, we can doubt in comfort, freed from backbreaking peasant labour by fantastic inventions, and use instant communications (developed by whom?) to demand of scientists that they cease doing their job of relentless inquiry.

Scientists have made mistakes; but throughout history have been far less dangerous to humanity than demagogues who appeal to fear and superstition.

On GM crops, science has a powerful case that has gone by default. The charge that genetically modifying organisms tampers with nature is true. We have always done so.

Nature is not a benign force that is out to protect homo sapiens. Jenner defied nature - and, many thought, common sense - when he began looking at cowpox. Antibiotics defy "natural" bacteria which, left alone, kill us. If the Prince of Wales had been around 100 years ago he would probably have told the Wright brothers that if God had wanted man to fly he would have given us wings.

Using new knowledge to do the same task, more precisely and more skilfully, that farmers have done for hundreds of years through the comparative guesswork of cross-breeding does not seem any more "unnatural" than breeding new strains of wheat by traditional means - or indeed new breeds of cattle.

Nobody has made an independently accepted case that any food produced by GM methods is unsafe. The famous tomato with fish genes - the only licensed product that crosses animal and plant life - apparently tastes horrible, but is harmless. Personally, I would prefer to eat food produced by GM - about 80 per cent of the stuff on US supermarket shelves - than most organic merchandise, none of which has gone through the rigorous testing standards demanded of GM products. Also, I would hope some polling organisation would ask the public, "Do you want to eat food covered in horse dung?" and show the findings to health food shops.

There are serious environmental concerns and the jury is still out on them. The sensible response is to hold more trials, not halt them. So far there has been not a single respectable scientific body anywhere in the world that has declared a GM crop now in cultivation to be a danger to the ecosystem. These are early stages in GM technology and there might be risks.

But life is about balancing risks: do road traffic accidents and pollution mean it was a mistake to invent the motor car?

The prime purpose of GM technology in agriculture has so far been to create crops that had in-built resistance to pests. Lowering the use of toxic pesticides was a loud demand by the Green movement until their eyes turned to GM technology.

Pesticide use in the US has fallen dramatically in the past few years - surely an environ-mental gain.

It is only scientists who offer the Third World genuine hopes of relief from hunger. They see agriculture the way it really is - a vast industrialised business in the West, hand-to-mouth scrabbling around on poor land almost everywhere else.

Prince Charles's ilk see it as a Hovis ad, the way it has not been for generations here and never in Africa.

Developing countries want access to a technology that can offer them vastly imp roved crop yields, to feed exponentially growing populations, on less land. Understandably they are less worried about the qualms of middle-class opinion in Europe.

Yes, much-hated companies like Monsanto want profit. That does not make biotechnology in itself wrong - all new inventions have always been developed by business for profit. The challenge is to ensure that poor countries which want to can have access to GM benefits at affordable prices.

The worst mistake, though, would be to give in to the call to halt GM testing, rigorously and independently controlled. Without open research and inquiry we do not have science. And without science we don't have civilisation.

Dated : 10 August 2000