1.The seeds of another GM row are sown
2.Zac Goldsmith attacks 'deceitful' David Cameron
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1.The seeds of another GM row are sown
Geoffrey Lean
The Telegraph, 14 December 2012
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/agriculture/geneticmodification/9745609/The-seeds-of-another-GM-row-are-sown.html
*Environment Secretary Owen Paterson's outburst at opponents of genetically modified crops and foods seems set to revive a decade-old war
Humbug. Christmastide would not be the same without the word. But while it is usually Scrooge’s denouncement of the festivities, this year the gloriously unrestrainable Owen Paterson has beaten that arch-apostle of austerity to it.
Not that, as far as I know, the new(ish) Environment Secretary has anything against the season of goodwill. His outburst – in an exclusive interview with The Daily Telegraph this week – was directed at opponents of genetically modified crops and foods. And it seems set to revive a row which for a decade has appeared as dead as Marley himself.
And that’s just to begin with. David Cameron – who voiced his own scepticism of GM while greening his party to make it (almost) electable – promptly piled in: Downing Street let it be known that he was working to “speed things up” in spreading the technology across Europe.
In doing so he, with the Eurosceptic Mr Paterson, is following a script written four years ago in Brussels. Frustrated at the slow spread of GM crops throughout Europe – a blocking minority of member states have only allowed two modified varieties, a maize and a potato, to be licensed for cultivation – José Manuel Barroso, President of the EC, then convened secret meetings of special representatives of all EU prime ministers to try to break the deadlock.
The confidential minutes show that the meetings resolved to “deal with” widespread public resistance to GM and – yes – “speed up” the introduction of the technology, after Barroso called on “prime ministers to look at the wider picture”. And this summer a meeting of British ministers, officials and the big biotechology firms decided to “start a public debate about the role of biotech”.
Mr Paterson’s intervention seems designed to do just that. Dismissing objections as “complete nonsense”, he said: “Emphatically we should be looking at GM… I’m very clear it would be a good thing,” adding: “What you’ve got to do is sell the real environmental benefits.”
An official consultation, seeking views on GM crops among other agricultural technologies, ended last month and there are indications that senior Lib Dems are moving away from their party’s longstanding hostility. “Yes, some people have doubts and fears,” one senior source told The Daily Telegraph, “but that’s something we should deal with, not run away from.”
Everything, it seems, is to play for. An opinion poll this year suggested public opposition to GM has softened from 2003 – the height of the row – from 36 to 33 per cent, with those in favour increasing from 14 to 16 per cent. But now, as then, most people remain neutral.
Yet government-organised debates have proved counterproductive. Ten years ago Tony Blair’s ministers staged one designed, as a senior official then told me, to “dispel the myths” spread by green “extremists”. But while GM opponents outnumbered supporters by three to one when it began, this had risen to nine to one by the end – with previously uncommitted participants becoming more antagonistic the more they learned about the technology.
Any new debate is unlikely to be edifying, since the protagonists have become ever more polarised. On the one side there is an almost evangelical faith – shared by many scientists and officials – in GM’s potential to tackle hunger and feed the world; on the other many deeply believe it to be always wrong, even, as the Prince of Wales has it, usurping the rule of the Creator.
Those seeking a rational middle course risk vituperation from both sides. And – with environmentalists happy to pull up experimental crops to frustrate research, and the industry prone to bluster and bullying – neither is overscrupulous about how it conducts its case. Yet the truth does lie between the extremes, and is more complicated than either pretends.
Take the “environmental benefits” mentioned by Mr Paterson. He specifically cited cuts in the use of pesticides and thus of fuel burnt in spraying them. Though environmentalists don’t admit it, the two types of GM crops overwhelmingly grown worldwide – one conferring resistance to specific herbicides, the other containing toxins that repel pests – have indeed achieved that.
One study concluded this year that, as a result, the amount of active ingredient used has fallen by more than 443,000 tons (about 9 per cent) since modified varieties were introduced in 1996, saving the emission of some 1.7 million tons of carbon dioxide.
But that is not the whole story. As time has gone by, weeds and insects have developed immunity to these GM approaches. In the United States, more than a million acres of arable land are infested with resistant weeds, and herbicide use is having to increase faster than on conventional crops: another recent study found that, consequently, much more now has to be used in the US than before GM varieties were introduced. And insect pests have developed resistance to toxins in India.
Similarly, studies give conflicting views on the effects of growing GM on wildlife. A review last year concluded that “the impacts on biodiversity are positive on balance”. But much the most comprehensive study ever conducted – the British government’s “farm-scale evaluations” of a decade ago – unexpectedly uncovered huge reductions in seed-producing plants, and thus in the birds that rely on them, in fields with modified sugar beet and oilseed rape.
That study ended any hope of growing GM crops commercially in Britain, at least until now, but omitted what most people see as the greatest potential environmental danger – the escape of genes to create “superweeds” or contaminate neighbouring crops. This has already happened to some extent and is, as the Royal Society put it, “almost impossible to prevent” – posing severe problems for farmers, especially organic ones. And once the genes are out in the environment, the clock can never be turned back.
Mr Paterson also suggested that widespread health concerns about eating modified food were misplaced, since it is already being consumed widely without apparent ill-effects. And it is absolutely true that billions of GM meals have now been gobbled up worldwide without anyone becoming immediately unwell.
But this, too, is only part of the picture. Few have ever suggested there would be prompt effects – the real concerns are that eating GM food could lead to the development of cancers and other diseases later in life: not enough time has elapsed to show whether or not they are justified.
Yet again, laboratory studies conflict. The most famous – by an initially pro-GM scientist, Árpád Pusztai, found damage to rats’ immune systems, brains, livers and kidneys. He was denounced, his research was stopped, his team disbanded and data confiscated, and he was forced into retirement. Other studies, mainly by critics of the technology, have offered him some support – including one which recently found increased cancers in rats studied over a lifetime rather than the usual 90 days. But most – including ones conducted by the industry – are reassuring.
There is still a lack of really good studies either way. Meanwhile GM food should be labelled to offer shoppers the choice – something promised in the Conservative manifesto.
But surely modified crops increase yields? Again, it’s a confused picture. The main ones being cultivated don’t even aim to do so, except by lessening attacks from pests and weeds. Scientists again are at odds, but it seems that – on balance – there may be modest overall gains but nothing really significant.
Of course in future crops may be developed that do revolutionise harvests, while others may be engineered to withstand droughts and floods. But critics say that producing them is much harder than for current GM varieties, and may be impossible. Certainly, though they have long been promised, they have yet to materialise. In the meantime more progress is being made with other techniques.
So there is much to debate, if only we can have a mature exchange, avoiding the false certainties of either side. Mr Paterson may have “no doubt whatever” as Scrooge did of Marley’s demise. But without a more sophisticated approach, the issue looks like once again coming back to haunt a government.
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2.Zac Goldsmith attacks "deceitful" David Cameron
The Telegraph, 14 December 2012
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9747315/Zac-Goldsmith-attacks-deceitful-David-Cameron.html
*Zac Goldsmith, the Conservative MP, claims that David Cameron has deceived voters over genetically modified crops.
Once trumpeted as David Cameron’s environmental adviser, Zac Goldsmith is biting the hand that fed him. The Tory MP accuses the Prime Minister of “deception” and capitulating to big business over genetically modified crops.
Last week, Cameron urged European Union bureaucrats to allow more farmers to grow GM crops in Britain. Goldsmith calls it “Cameron’s predictable capitulation to big business”.
The 37-year-old son of Sir James Goldsmith, the late billionaire financier, adds: “Theoretically, he could have studied GM and changed his view, but it looks more like political deception. No excuse for that.”
Goldsmith was appointed as the deputy chairman of the Conservative Quality of Life Policy Group in 2005 by David Cameron, who placed him on the party’s “A-List” of parliamentary candidates.
Cameron made his comments about GM crops after Owen Paterson, the Environment Secretary, said such food should be grown and sold widely in Britain. Paterson described consumer opposition to the technology as a “complete nonsense” and said the artificially developed food had “real environmental benefits”.
People were even eating it in London restaurants without knowing it, he said. Goldsmith seized Richmond Park from the Liberal Democrats at the 2010 general election.