Right Royal farce of GM scare tactics

Grocer, August 23, 2008 by Tony Combes

SIR; So what have we learnt from Prince Charles latest opinion on genetically modified crops? It was sheer lunacy for Prince Charles's advisers to let him not just predict catastrophe, but claim-thanks to GM-it's already happening. Can we be certain the launch of Duchy Originals in India is unrelated to his reference regarding the fall in the Punjab water table? He says he has observed it personally.

Pity his schedule prevented even one of the four million small, resource-poor Indian GM cotton growers who chose to harvest more than 15 million acres last year explaining why more of them plant the stuff each year. Hardly the end of farming as we know it or as HRH put it "millions of small farmers all over the world being driven off their land into unsustainable, unmanageable, degraded and dysfunctional conurbations of unmentionable awfulness".

And by the way, your Royal Highness, relying on "gigantic corporations" for food has not resulted in "absolute disaster".

Currently the BRC's line is the same as it eventually became in 1999 when GM ingredients were finally removed from all own-label products. "There's no customer demand", so BRC members have still not moved on after a decade.

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The BRC response is no different from the present Tories' claim that they will not approve GM crops until "the science shows it safe for health and the environment". Who was it who approved as safe as conventional products the import of GM soya and maize for most own-label meat back in 1994?

Ah, silly me--safe then (two years before the first crops were even commercialised) but not now. After a cumulative 56 million farmers have successfully harvested GM crops for a dozen years from more than 1.7 billion acres in 23 countries--home to more than half the world's population--one would hope food production methods would not be pure party politics.

Since those heady days in 1994, every country now has regulations covering GM food consumption. Meanwhile here in the UK, who nationally joins in with the BRC, Soil Association, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, in denying choice? Well, not the FDF, Royal Sodety, BMA, NFU, Country Life etc.

The FSA's latest annual consumer trends survey indicates falling levels of GM concern. They are now down to less than 3%. It reminds me of the 2003 IGD shopper survey that showed 3% worried about GM, 3% didn't, and the rest frankly couldn't care less or didn't read labels. IGD one, BRC/NGOs zero.

The IGD used to run the only media training courses on GM. But in the middle 90s, very few turned up and no national media were interested at all. How times change--I sometimes wonder if the BBC has a vested interest in keeping the debate going, otherwise it would lose a major source of news creation, let alone reporting.

Can someone please explain why the BBCGreen website 60 seconds guide to GM still claims the Flavr Savr tomato contained a fish gene to increase shelf life? It didn't and it wouldn't! It's a classic example of a researcher using a favourite search engine rather than scholar.google.com to search for peer-reviewed studies and academic papers.

Perhaps there's a role for the IGD to help bring together the BRC and FDF once again? Or perhaps the organic interests in all three are too busy supplying Clarence House with opinions about food security and organic yields. After all, opinions without evidence are pure prejudice--as the advisers to the Prince of Wales know only too well.

Tony Combes Pioneer of UK organic retail market for 14 years at Safeway and director of corporate affairs at Monsanto UK until 2007