While the term GM may conjure up images of campaigners actively voicing their disapproval of the biotechnological crop concept, it is also fair to say that those who stand firmly on the ‘pro’ side of the debate are equally as vociferous in getting their point across.
Two organisations have been spearheading the pro-GM movement in the UK, and trying to ensure that the public gets to hear both sides of the story before making its mind up. The Agricultural Biotechnology Council (abc) was set up in 2002 by six biotech companies - BASF, Bayer CropScience, Dow, Monsanto, Pioneer and Syngenta - in response to a carefully and relatively successfully co-ordinated NGO campaign to drive GM technologies out of the UK. “We represent the interests of companies involved in agricultural biotechnology research and the adoption of GM crops in the UK,” says Dr Julian Little, chairman of the council and public and government affairs manager at Bayer CropScience.
Around the same time as abc was formed, a group of scientists interested in debunking the myths around biotechnology also clubbed together and formed CropGen, of which Professor Vivian Moses is the chair. A consumer and media information initiative, CropGen’s mission is to make the case for GM crops and foods by helping to achieve a greater measure of realism and better balance in the UK’s public discussions on agriculture and food. “We aim to help people understand the scientific implications of biotech and GM,” says Moses.
“We want to put across the technology of the science, and make it accessible and understandable to the public, countering some of the nonsense that is spoken. We frequently appear on the TV and radio, and have a website. CropGen is a network of 30 people, consisting of mainly scientists or people who have worked closely with EU regulations. We carry no company baggage and are prepared to be challenged - there is no question in science you mustn’t ask.”
Little adds: “We support the independence of CropGen and work hard to make sure it remains that way - which means we may have to be prepared for our firms to be criticised on occasion.”
The GM debate has moved on in the public eye, says Little, and the positioning of the arguments a decade ago has shifted significantly. “In the old days, there was a siege mentality about GM, and we had to be fairly defensive of it,” he says. “However, it is now clear that, elsewhere in the world, GM technology was and is extremely successful.”
Some 12 million farmers around the world grow GM food, on 114m hectares - an area roughly the size of the UK, France and Ireland put together. The Americans have been happily eating GM food since 1995, according to Little, and the majority of the country’s processed food contains GM ingredients. “From a global perspective, GM is a mature concept,” he says. “Second- and third-generation products are being produced successfully. What has changed in the last 18 months in the UK is that there is now a sense of recognition that food is not as plentiful as it once was. We are now producing just enough food for the world to survive, and the situation is getting critical.
“I find it very bizarre that the first time the UK government finally accepted that we are facing a food security issue was only this year, at the Oxford Farming Conference.”
And what would the consequence of a food shortage in the UK be? “The UK is full of relatively well-off people, so it would largely be reflected in an increase in prices. However, even though we only spend something like 10 per cent of our salaries on eating in this country, people are very conscious of food prices,” says Little.
Throughout agricultural history, scientists have worked to improve crops, says Moses, and plant scientists now believe that they are coming to the end of what they can do using traditional methods. “That is why GM is so important - it will breathe a whole new lease of life into agriculture,” he says.
But the UK’s capacity for scientific investigation has seriously dwindled, according to Moses. “About 20 years ago, we were the world leader in plant breeding, but the government’s inability to support this activity has made it much more difficult, and what the newspapers print doesn’t always help.”
Little agrees. “We are now in a situation where if Europe gets it wrong and doesn’t try to kickstart biotechnology, we will be left to import a lot of food from places that may not necessarily want to send to us, like North America and South America,” he says. “Markets like India and South East Asia are growing exponentially - if you are an exporter from the US or South America, why would you want to deal with countries like the UK, with all its regulations, when you can send to markets without such hurdles. Europe is unbelievably slow at pushing through regulations.”
But the tide is turning and, like it or not, abc believes that GM will be a reality in the future - and people are gradually coming to terms with that.
“What has become crystal clear is that there are no issues surrounding the quality and safety of GM food,” says Little. “We have moved away from a debate about whether GM is acceptable at a public safety level, to a debate on how and where it could help the food industry. We would never say that GM is the only solution to food security - but we would say you would be mad to throw it away. It is no longer a black and white issue.”
“Speaking on the BBC’s Hardtalk, even Waitrose managing director Mark Price said that GM food has a lower carbon footprint than non-GM food, and even a lower footprint than organic - with GM crops, productivity increases, so carbon emissions go down because ploughing activity decreases, not as much pesticide needs to be applied, etc,” says Moses.
“There is growing recognition among fruit and veg growers that they need to boost productivity across all their crops. For example, GM papaya actually saved the Hawaiian papaya industry from ringspot, a virus that swept through the crop in the 1990s and destroyed much of the industry. Using GM technology, a team at Cornell University found resistance and, as a result, the country still has a papaya business. Now growers in Thailand and Malaysia are also showing an interest in the technology.
“Agriculture is an unstable system,” Moses continues. “Throughout history, farmers have had an endless job maintaining maximum yield. The pesticide industry was developed to help farmers with this process - biotechnology is just the next step. What you have to remember is that the genes put into GM plants are not artificial; they already exist in nature, and are just moved from one place to another.”
A series of GM trials on potato crops in the UK last year gave the public tangible results to latch on to, says Little. “The public could see that those potatoes, which would usually have had to be sprayed several times to prevent potato blight, survived the disease because they had been genetically modified to be resistant to blight. The crop trials were damaged, but those who had been arrested were not from the local community where the trials were being conducted, but were quite well known anti-globalisation campaigners. The NGOs are certainly working a lot harder to make their case against GM, and they are starting to look more and more desperate. After 10 years, crying wolf starts to look a bit tired.
“The Soil Association recently released a report which said that GM crops yield less than non-GM crops. Those who buy GM seed have an average repurchase of 90 per cent. So, there are either some really crazy farmers out there, or the Soil Association simply has not got its facts straight. If I were a producer, I’d be deeply insulted by some of what the newspapers say. Yet people are prepared to continue to publish information that insults 12m farmers,” he adds.
So if science has proven GM food is safe to eat, where does the discomfort of many people towards the idea of eating modified food stem from? “A lot of consumer reluctance towards GM is historical,” says Little. “A decade ago, we were told by the politicians that we had to decrease crop productivity, and there was also a wave of food-related scares such as BSE and listeria. So companies which at that time were experimenting with GM were coming up with crops that actually improved productivity, at a time when we were being told there was too much food.
“But the reason why GM crops were seen as unfavourable 10-12 years ago has disappeared. GM has had no demonstrably negative impact. It will always take a while for people’s opinions to catch up, and large price increases in food are helping to change that.
“From the very beginning, abc has set out its stall as fighting for a fair debate - if you can prove there is no harm associated with growing or eating GM crops, then it should be left to the market to decide if they want to eat them. We know elsewhere in the world where it has been left for consumers to make the choice that the market adopts GM quickly, and farmers do too.”
Moses adds: “However, politics often play a key role in the issue. One example is when Greenpeace was questioned on its stance on GM, and the NGO just said it is categorically against GM in principle and is impervious to evidence to the contrary. So clearly, there is a political axe to grind.”
But with organisations like abc and CropGen actively standing up for the pro-GM movement, there will always be somebody to counter the NGOs. “If people want information, we will supply it,” says Little. “The truth is there, and where there are opportunities to highlight it, we will.”
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