Martin Hemingway, lead Green, Euro elections 2009.
The GM industry is starting to lose the initiative in its attempt to foist their experimental crops on an unwilling public. Dr Julian Little (Yorkshire Post, Letters 19 May) leaps in with the chance to laud the role of GM in feeding the future world population.
What tangible evidence is there to present when we know, for example, that growth in soya yield has declined since the shift from conventional breeding to GM, and that in India ‘resistant’ cotton is losing its resistance as the pests evolve to cope - that is how evolution works.
Trillions of meals with GM ingredients may have been eaten by an unaware public, but Dr Little will know as well as I do that accumulated instances do not prove something, but one counter case can falsify it. We do have extensive experimental evidence of the negative health effects of feeding GM foods to animals - effects on fertility, birth abnormalities, and survival rates amongst others.
The risks of GM are real, with contamination of nearby crops, and the aggressive GM companies suing the farmers who have had their crops contaminated!
"If the risks were trivial then the industry would be willing to accept liability for future problems - and it has refused. Then the insurance industry would be willing to insure against the risk - and they too have refused.
If Dr Little responds to this letter can I ask him for one favour - can he tell us if there are any funding links between the GM companies and the Agricultural Biotechnology Council that he chairs?
Martin Hemingway (Dr)
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