"People are dying because of the agriculture industry's obsession with hi-tech fixes like GM. Sustainable agricultural techniques and political solutions like land reform are driven off the agenda by the greed and arrogance of the biotechnology industries.

"What the companies are after is control over the food chain that doesn't actually deliver food for local people. The real issues in global food supply are about distribution of food and the way markets are undermined."

That's the telling response given in the first article below to the claims of Prof Mike Gale about the necessity of developing GM.

Gale's spoken about that necessity before though from a rather different angle - the necessity of avoiding severe damage to the institute which at the time he headed and where he has spent the majority of his working life. Gale warned then that any serious slow down on GM would be a huge blow for the John Innes Centre, hitting its industry grants: "It would be very, very serious for us." (see item 2)

Prof Gale is a perfect example of the enormous influence of the small self-interested clique campaigning for this technology. Gale has contributed in different ways to 3 different Royal Society reports on GM; he was a member of the UK Government's science review panel on GM; he served on the Government's Advisory Committee on GM; he is a Consultant to the Rockefeller Foundation; he is a Member of the Board of Trustees of the International Rice Research Institute and he is on the CGIAR's Central Advisory Services Steering Committee. He has also contributed, along with Derek Burke who also connects to the JIC, to both of the Nuffield reports on GM (1999 and 2003). He is also one of the GM 'experts' in a directory compiled by the Royal Society to help journalists get their science stories right.

1.World will need GM food, warns expert
2.Meet the expert: Mike Gale - a GM WATCH profile
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1.World will need GM food, warns expert
JAMES REYNOLDS
ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT
http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=830312004

GENETIC modification and other biotechnologies are essential to increase food production and meet huge projected rises in the world's population, a leading expert on plant science has warned.

If the advances made in creating genetically modified foods are not used to increase food output the world could find itself in the grip of a food crisis in as little as 15 years, perhaps even ten, said Professor Mike Gale of the John Innes Centre, one of Europe's largest independent centres for research into plant and microbial science.

At present there are six billion people on the planet and, according to the United Nations, that number is set to rise to nine billion by 2050.

The current annual production of 1.8 billion tons of cereals must be increased to three billion tons a year, Prof Gale told the BioScience 2004 conference at Glasgow's SECC. He warned: "We have doubled food production over the past half century. Now we have to do it again, but this time we have to do it sustainably. We don't have any more good land and we don't have any more water and we have to use fewer chemicals.

"At least half of these increases will have to come from improved varieties, especially varieties bred to tolerate drought and salt and be resistant to pests and diseases. We must also reduce our reliance on fertilisers and other chemical inputs."

Biotechnology can both speed up the breeding process and provide crops with advantageous new genes, and genetic modification is one of a range of techniques available.

The technology can provide variations not otherwise available in the crop or close relatives - such as insect-resistant cowpeas for Africa, rice rich in vitamin A in Asia and disease-resistant bananas throughout the tropics.

Bananas are an exceptionally difficult crop to breed and those bought in most British supermarkets are derived from a breed produced about 100 years ago. Over that 100 years, they have become susceptible to a wide range of diseases, in particular the Black Sigatoka fungus. In Nigeria banana plants have to be sprayed about once a week with powerful fungicides. Advocates of genetic modification say many farmers in Africa lose their crops because they can not afford the fungicides.

Although Prof Gale acknowledges that genetic modification is not the only solution to breeding new varieties of crops, he is adamant that the potential benefits can be realised.

He said: "It is time we came out and said people do not die from GM and the way in which crops are bred. They die from lack of food. There are no risks from GM."

Despite GM trials in Britain concluding that two of the three crops tested had a damaging effect on wildlife, Prof Gale went on: "The results of the field trials carried out in this country are of absolutely no concern. If you look carefully at the trials it is evident that the GM crops required half of the herbicides compared to non-GM varieties, and also required half of the passes through the field by tractors. That means massive benefits to the environment."

Duncan McLaren, chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, said: "People are dying because of the agriculture industry's obsession with hi-tech fixes like GM. Sustainable agricultural techniques and political solutions like land reform are driven off the agenda by the greed and arrogance of the biotechnology industries.

"What the companies are after is control over the food chain that doesn't actually deliver food for local people. The real issues in global food supply are about distribution of food and the way markets are undermined."
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2.Meet the expert: Mike Gale - a GM WATCH profile
[FOR ALL THE LINKS: http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=48&page=G ]

Prof Mike Gale is a Fellow of the Royal Society and until his recent retirment was the Head of the Comparative Genetics Unit at the John Innes Centre (JIC), which receives funding via Lord Sainsbury's Gatsby Trust and the bio-science public funding body BBSRC, as well as via several of the major biotech corporations. His particular interest is cereal genetics.

Gale was briefly the Acting Director of the JIC prior to the appointment of Prof Chris Lamb. Gale is on record as saying that a GM moratorium would be a serious financial blow to the JIC. According to a front page article in the Eastern Daily Press, 'Warning on GM food ban' (15th February 1999), based around comments by Gale:

'a government-imposed ban or long-term moratorium on growing GM crops or introducing any more GM foods would be a huge blow for the John Innes Centre. "It would be very, very serious for us. There's no doubt the Norwich Research Park and Norwich would suffer," said Prof Gale.'

The article continues, 'A ban would choke off many grants which the John Innes Centre receives from industry to research genetic modification techniques.'

Prof Gale was a member of the UK Government's science review panel on GM. He was also one of four JIC scientists who were members of the working group that produced the Royal Society's 1998 report on GM. He was later part of the four man Royal Society team who contributed to a report on GM in 2000 from seven national or international academies of science. He also gave evidence to the working group who produced the Royal Society's 2002 report on GM.

He has also served on the Government's Advisory Committee on Genetic Modification. He is a Consultant to the Rockefeller Foundation, a Member of the Board of Trustees of the International Rice Research Institute and is on the CGIAR's Central Advisory Services Steering Committee. He was also, together with Derek Burke and Brian Heap, a Member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics' Working Party on Genetic Engineering, as such he contributed to both their May 1999 report and their December 2003 report, both of which argued that there is a moral imperative to develop GM crops.

Gale is also one of the 'experts' in a directory compiled by the Royal Society to help journalists with their science stories. In a Daily Mail article of 31 Jul 2001, 'The GM tomato that could feed the world', Gale claims a GM salt-tolerant tomato 'breakthrough' will 'reduce public opposition to GM crops'. Gale says nothing, however, about the non-GM means available of developing salt- tolerance. Yet Gale could hardly fail to have known about the success of such non-GM research, as it had occurred with wheat, a major food crop in which he has taken an especial interest, and the research had been undertaken at the JIC itself. If anyone thinks this non-GM breakthrough may have been accidentally overlooked, then it is worth looking at the questionable history of science communication by scientists at the JIC, including the case of the non-GM 'super broccoli' .
http://www.gmwatch.org/p2temp2.asp?aid=12&page=1&op=1