Devinder Sharma responds to an article in the Evening Standard on the increasing public unease over the Blair government's attempts to introduce GM crops into the UK by stealth. The House of Commons was told such a "momentous and irreversible" decision was supported by only 2% of the public. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=2564
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Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2004 11:50 PM
Subject: Dear Editor...

Dear Editor,

Apropos the news report 'Growing public unease over GM crops' (Feb 5, 2004), I was amused to read Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett's reply to MPs at question time in Parliament: "In a world where GM is extensively grown, and extensively available, we have to deal with the reality of its existence and not hope that it can somehow be wished away." If this is the level of ignorance that prevails in the British Parliament, I can understand how Tony Blair misled the British Parliament into believing that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction!

Margaret Beckett is wrong. GM crops are not extensively grown. These crops do not occupy more than 5 per cent of the world's cultivable lands. If this is her logic for pushing GM crops into Britain, she should know that in the United States alone, the pornography industry is 35 times the size of Hollywood, does it mean that the US government should legalise pornography? After all, the huge pornography industry is a reality even in Britain, but then why is the British government not legalising it? Iraq is a reality despite the uproar over Blair's lies to the British people, does it mean that Britain should go on launching armed attacks against any and every country that it wishes?

Tony Blair took Britain into war with Iraq to promote the commercial interests of the oil industry. Margaret Beckett is promoting the commercial interests of a discredited GM industry.

Devinder Sharma
Chairman
Forum for Biotechnology & Food Security,
7 Triveni,
A-6 Paschim Vihar,
New delhi-110 063,
India.
Tel: +91-9811301857