1.Prince Charles in battle with ministers over 'cynical' attempts to push GM food as the solution to world hunger
2.The 'Luddite' Prince and a GM catastrophe
3.Prince says GM crops will harm not feed the world and he may have a point
EXTRACTS: ...the Prince is challenging a Government that has always been in cahoots with America's biotech industry and is still (to its discredit) trying to foist GM crops on a reluctant nation.
(iem 2)
The overwhelming majority of readers contacting the Mail Online website supported Charles's comments.
And Tory food spokesman Peter Ainsworth said: 'Charles is voicing concerns which many people share about the potential consequences of believing GM technology will solve the world's food security problems.' (item 1)
---
---
1.Prince Charles in battle with ministers over 'cynical' attempts to push GM food as the solution to world hunger
By Sean Poulter
Daily Mail, 13th August 2008
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1044146/Prince-Charles-battle-ministers-cynical-attempts-push-GM-food-solution-world-hunger.html
Prince Charles has been thrust into a fierce battle with the Government after warning that GM farming will deliver an 'environmental disaster'.
He is furious at 'cynical' attempts by the biotech industry and ministers to push genetically modified crops as the solution to Third World hunger.
Charles says the industrialisation of farming, which includes GM, is destroying the soil, polluting waterways and pushing out small producers.
He accused agrochemical firms of conducting a 'gigantic experiment with nature and the whole of humanity which has gone seriously wrong'.
A number of Labour MPs yesterday rubbished his concerns, suggesting he was 'Luddite'.
However, his views echo those of at least one senior government scientist and a recent UN commission which warned against the further industrialisation of farming.
The Prince said relying on gigantic corporations for the mass production of food would threaten supplies and the future of small farmers.
'If they think this is the way to go we will end up with millions of small farmers all over the world being driven off their land into unsustainable, unmanageable, degraded and dysfunctional conurbations of unmentionable awfulness. I think it will be an absolute disaster.
'What we should be talking about is food security not food production - that is what matters and that is what people will not understand. If they think it's somehow going to work because they are going to have one form of clever genetic engineering after another then count me out, because that will be guaranteed to cause the biggest disaster environmentally of all time.'
His words follow a meeting between Environment Minister Phil Woolas and the Agricultural Biotechnology Council, which speaks for GM giants such as Monsanto.
Mr Woolas, who is apparently being lined up by the Government as a GM cheerleader, said: 'There is a growing question of whether GM crops can help the developing world out of the current food price crisis.'
Labour MP Des Turner was the first to turn on the heir to the throne yesterday. 'Prince Charles has got a way of getting things absolutely wrong. It's an entirely Luddite attitude to simply reject this out of hand.'
Another, Ian Gibson, said: 'Prince Charles should stick to his royal role rather than spout off about something which he has clearly got wrong.'
And Liberal Democrat Phil Willis, chairman of the all-party Commons science committee, said: 'While I admire Prince Charles's commitment to environmental causes, his lack of scientific understanding and his willingness to condemn millions of people to starvation in areas like sub-Saharan Africa is absolutely bewildering.
'The reality is that without the development of science in farming, we would not be able to feed a tenth of the world population, which will exceed nine billion by 2050.'
Those claims are challenged by the UN commission on the future of farming, which was chaired by Professor Robert Watson, chief scientist at Defra.
Prof Watson said the industrialisation of farming has failed to produce the food needed by the world. Consequently, some 850million people around the world go to bed hungry each night. The commission, which published its findings in April, specifically rejected GM as the answer to poverty and hunger.
It said it had led to the heavy use of chemicals, leeching the soil of nutrients and polluting waterways.
In a comment that directly echoes those of Charles, Prof Watson said: 'We are putting food that appears cheap on our tables but it is food that is not always healthy and that costs us dearly in terms of water, soil and the biological diversity on which our futures depend.'
The overwhelming majority of readers contacting the Mail Online website supported Charles's comments.
And Tory food spokesman Peter Ainsworth said: 'Charles is voicing concerns which many people share about the potential consequences of believing GM technology will solve the world's food security problems.'
The great experiment ...and the consumer backlash
The GM process involves inserting a foreign gene, which might come from the soil, a virus or an animal, into a plant to give it new supposedly beneficial properties.
Fish genes have been added to some tomatoes to help them withstand cold.
Most GM crops in commercial cultivation, such as soya, have been altered to withstand spraying by particular weedkillers. The plants thrive while weeds are wiped out.
But opponents argue the side-effects of the GM experiment are unknown and potentially risky.
Controversial: The genetic modification of food
In 1996 the Daily Mail's Genetic Food Watch campaign highlighted concerns for health and the countryside. Addressing consumer anxiety, the EU imposed a moratorium on the release of new GM crops and food in 1998.
A growing consumer backlash convinced retailers, led by Marks & Spencer and Sainsbury's, to banish GM ingredients from own-label products in 1999.
The UK Government has been a cheerleader in the EU for GM technology. It opposed the labelling of GM foods and supported U.S. government efforts to have the EU moratorium lifted.
In 2001, Tony Blair argued supporting GM technology was vital for Britain's reputation as a leader in the field of science.
In 2003, farm trials in the UK, the largest ever conducted, found GM farming harms the countryside. The spraying regimes for GM oilseed rape and beet, killed off weeds, weed seeds and beetles.
This, in turn, threatened to starve birds such as the skylark.
Government research published the same year showed GM pollen was carried up to 16 miles from farm trial sites.
The Government has drawn up plans to allow commercial GM farming but none has yet started. GM firms hope the first commercial crops - oilseed rape, maize, potatoes or sugar beet - will be grown commercially within two years.
---
---
2.The 'Luddite' Prince and a GM catastrophe
Editorial, Daily Mail, 14 August 2008
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1044664/The-Luddite-Prince-GM-catastrophe.html
[image caption - The Prince of Wales: Well informed on the GM issue]
How eagerly the cheerleaders for GM farming queue to attack Prince Charles for daring to warn that the reckless development of modified crops is heading for an 'environmental disaster'.
Labour politicians denounce him as a Luddite.
He's an ignoramus, sneers a Lib Dem MP.
A crop researcher accuses him of ignoring the plight of the world's poor.
News bulletins from the supposedly impartial BBC even suggest he is flirting with extremism.
But this wasn't an unconsidered outburst from a know-nothing amateur.
Charles is unusually well informed on the GM issue and has been concerned about the potential dangers for years.
Indeed, writing about them in the Mail in 1999 he warned against creating an 'Orwellian future'.
So the convictions he expresses so passionately today are the product of long reflection.
Now the Prince is challenging a Government that has always been in cahoots with America's biotech industry and is still (to its discredit) trying to foist GM crops on a reluctant nation.
The claim, of course, is that GM technology will solve Third World hunger. But Charles is contemptuous of such arguments.
He points out that the industrialisation of farming, which includes GM, is destroying the soil, polluting waterways and driving small producers off the land. And we don't have to take his word for it.
A recent UN report on food and farming, led by the top scientist at the environment department, Professor Robert Watson, came to similar conclusions.
Industrialised farming hasn't fed the world and GM technology isn't a magic wand. So why is Labour pushing so hard for it?
Why won't it listen to organic farmers who fear their land will be contaminated by GM cross-pollination? What about the danger of creating GM superweeds? Why pretend there is no threat to wildlife or the wider environment?
Prince Charles, with his extravagant lifestyle and habit of hopping into a helicopter at the drop of a hat, may not seem an entirely convincing saviour of the planet.
But he has put forward serious arguments that need to be heard. And struck a resounding chord with the public.
---
---
3.Prince says GM crops will harm not feed the world and he may have a point
by Steve Dube
Western Mail, August 14 2008
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2008/08/14/prince-says-gm-crops-will-harm-not-feed-the-world-and-he-may-have-a-point-91466-21529651/
IT’S ironic that rising food prices and fears of future shortages should begin to attract attention just as EU farm policy has shifted from maximising production to safeguarding the environment.
Prince Charles waded into the debate on this new scenario yesterday by restating his ardent opposition to genetically modified crops the very technology that its creators claim will feed the world AND safeguard the environment.
The Prince is a passionate organic farmer, favouring the non-chemical approach to food production that abhors GM technology.
He has spoke out against GM crops before, but this time he has gone further, saying they threaten to bring about the biggest environmental disaster of all time.
These are strong words, and there’s no way to find out whether he is right or wrong until it’s too late.
But one unanswerable problem is that GM material can “escape” to cross-fertilise conventional plants.
And as we have discovered with other foreign escapees, from the grey squirrel to Japanese Knotweed, once they are out there it’s very hard to stop them having a drastic effect on our countryside.
GM technology has been around since February 1996, when Sainsbury and Safeway stores put Europe’s first American-grown, and clearly-labelled GM tomatoes on their shelves.
Twelve years on, the scene is very different. Consumers want nothing to do with GM food, and the biotech companies therefore don’t want it labelled.
Neither do they want to accept liability for anything that might, at some future stage, go wrong.
They don’t want to face possible litigation for polluting the natural environment or adversely affecting public health.
This last issue is largely unresearched but the biotech companies point out that people in North America have been eating GM food for over a decade with no evident effects. GM opponents say you won't find what you don't look for and no-one is looking.
The issue would be so much easier to agree on if GM technology did increase yields and safeguard the environment.
Unfortunately this is not the case. Multi-national companies aim to make money, not save the world.
GM crops are currently developed with increased tolerance to the pesticides, which are sold by the same companies, enabling farmers to use more of them, not less.
The effects on weeds and the insects that rely on them and the rest of the food chain from birds upwards are potentially devastating.
Meanwhile, the US Department of Agriculture itself has stated that there is no evidence of increased yields from GM crops.
On top of this, many GM crops are sterile “terminator” varieties requiring farmers to buy fresh seed every year.
This is why the Prince says they threaten small farmers across the world, who may simply not have the money to buy them.
Proponents argue that these are only the “first generation” of GM crops.
Forthcoming generations will meet the need for crops to feed the world and look after the environment.
But until they do, Prince Charles and the great majority of British consumers will understandably regard GM food with scepticism.