Guardian misprints GM opinion

From ISIS

“Britain must launch GM food revolution, says chief scientist” was the headline of an article in The Guardian (6 January 2010). The article, written by John Vidal and Felicity Lawrence and based on a paper “seen by the Guardian”, reported that the government’s chief scientist Prof. John Beddington “will warn today” at an Oxford farming conference that Britain “must embrace” both GM crops and nanotechnology “to avoid catastrophic food shortages and future climate change.”  [LINK]

However, on 9 January, The Guardian published a letter from Prof. Beddington stating categorically: “Your article misrepresents my position and my paper …. The paper makes no mention of GM and I have not said that Britain must launch a GM food revolution.” It went on to say: “GM technology is not something that should be simply accepted or rejected”, the question is what problems in agricultural production it can solve.”   [LINK]

Read the rest of this article here
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/UKCSMOGM.php

Hilary Benn didn’t mention GM

A Soil Association press release

GM – a failing technology with no future

Responding to Professor John Beddington’s speech to the Oxford Farming Conference, Emma Hockridge, policy manager of the Soil Association, said:

“GM is not going to feed a growing world population sustainably, now or in the future. We need far-reaching changes to our food and farming systems, rather than GM technology, which, despite millions in public and private research expenditure, has consistently failed to deliver food security.

“Climate change and diminishing resources, like oil and phosphates, are impacting negatively on farming, and demand scientific expertise and excellence to tackle them. Research into Marker Assisted Selection (MAS), which is now leading the way in new crop developments, is enormously important and should be supported.

“We also need to highlight the contribution that agro-ecological and organic farming, with its lower-oil and chemical inputs, can make – as well as encouraging citizens to adopt sustainable diets that change with the seasons and to support local production – these actions will provide greater resilience for our food supplies than outmoded techno-fixes.

“It is striking that the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural affairs Hilary Benn didn’t mention GM in his speech to the Oxford Farming Conference yesterday – this is the most half hearted and feeble endorsement of GM since the technology arrived twenty years ago.”

CONTACT DETAILS:
Clio Turton
Press office manager
0117 914 2448 / 07795 562 556
Soil Association, South Plaza, Marlborough Street, Bristol BS1 3NX

Royal Society GM groups headed by pro-GM professor

Pro-GM Professor David Baulcombe chaired the Royal Society working group which this week called for genetically-modified crop technology to adopted by the UK.

Professor Baulcombe said: “If we are to take full advantage of the benefits which science can offer to food production, then we must act now, by identifying valuable science technologies, investing in research, and by laying the regulatory framework to bring these technologies to market.”

Baulcombe has previously been head of the Sainsbury Laboratory at the John Innes Centre (JIC), Norwich, UK.

Oversold technology

Farmers Guardian (30 Jan, p.14)

Professor Robert Watson, Defra Chief Scientist, comments: “We don’t need GM to solve the hunger problem of today…David King [previous Government Chief Scientist who claimed hunger in Africa was because they had not embraced GM crops] was absolutely wrong. Farmers in Africa can’t afford the better seeds, they have no access to fertilisers and sprays and they have severe constraints over irrigation – you don’t need GM to solve that.”

Watson also says that GM won’t solve the problem of food waste, and while there may be a role for GM in the future is has been ‘an oversold technology’.

GM Science – in the service of man?

www.feedingtheworldconference.org

“Future foods: join the GM debate” – so the cry rang out from London’s Science Museum as it worked hard to assemble a public meeting (January 22nd 2008) to debate the issues raised in its temporary exhibition of the same name.

Despite fears from some observers that this debate and the accompanying exhibition were to be used to grace GM technology with phoney public endorsement, in reality it all turned out rather different. Whether your were pro, anti or agnostic on the issue of GM farming and food, there was little appetite from the panel of speakers, let alone from most contributors from the floor, for wholesale adoption of GM crops.

Defra chief scientific adviser Bob Watson stole the show with his blunt analysis of the real food and nutrition problems facing the world. The goal, he said, has to be how to feed 900 million hungry people in the developing world.

This is not a challenge for technology to solve alone; we need a pro-poor trade regime, we need real rural development; we must put farmers at the centre of the debate and pay them for global public goods as well as food production, said Bob Watson.

“We may need GM in the future, but at present it is an oversold technique, which needs examination on a case by case basis,” he concluded.

Professor Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at City University, was equally lukewarm about the prospects for GM crops to solve what he termed the new fundamentals of farming and food production. Any solution has to operate under and – even better – help to solve the global pressures on energy supply, soil quality, water availability, the carbon cycle. To Professor Lang the key GM policy and political issue is ownership of the technology and its control.

As the debate opened up to comment and questions from the floor it soon became apparent that the organisers – who had feared hectoring, unruly behaviour from an anti-GM “rabble” were in fact faced with irate researchers from such bodies as the John Innes Institute. Their degree of upset that society might wish to have a say on the direction that science is leading them was illuminating.

One such contributor asked why all the speakers were treating GM as a “generic science” with generic risk when each application was different and, in any case, merely mimicked “natural” processes. (All the speakers had carefully talked of “case by case” analysis).

Bob Watson’s reasoned answer was lost in a cacophony of interruption from other researchers, forcing him to describe their approach as rude and uncivilised. An early retreat to drinks and an interval in debate was hurriedly called before the honour of the scientific establishment could be tarnished further. Perhaps they do debate differently in Norwich?