Three years ago, at the City Food Lecture, then Tesco CEO Sir Terry Leahy hinted at a possible u-turn on GM food. “I get the sense that the science has moved on another notch and maybe there is an opportunity to discuss [GM issues] again,” he said, adding that there also seemed to be a growing appreciation that GM was likely to play “a vital role in feeding the world, adapting to climate change and indeed producing some of these more nutritional products that people will need”.
Leahy has, of course, moved on. But has the debate surrounding GM? Are UK farmers ready to open their gates to growing crops modified to resist pests or disease? Are supermarkets ready to dust off the tins of GM fruit puree or promote a blight-resistant potato? And, perhaps most importantly, are the public ready to eat them?
“The politicians seem to be saying that we can’t keep dismissing this technology out of hand, and yet the likes of the Soil Association say, oh yes we can,” says Jonathan Jones, a senior scientist at The Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich. “Meanwhile we’ve got food manufacturers and supermarkets that don’t see how the benefits outweigh the potential risks to their brands and an ill-informed public that doesn’t know what to think.”
Jones says the notion that GM is unsafe is “a nonsense”. Like many of his peers he is clearly frustrated with the lack of commercial applications of GM crops in Europe - especially to combat diseases like potato late blight: “The technology is available to prevent hundreds of millions of pounds of crop losses without the use of chemicals.”
At the Oxford Farming Conference last month, both the farming minister, Jim Paice, and his Labour counterpart, Mary Creagh, hinted that the time is right to look at the technology afresh.
Of course, what happens on shelf will depend very much on the supermarkets. Some experts suggest that though the oft-confusing policies on GM from the major multiples (especially those around animal feed) might not have been relaxed, the issue receives a less prominent platform on websites and branding. For now, the top line remains: our customers don’t want it. The likes of the Soil Association and GMFreeze agree. “The public remain as sceptical now as they were in 2003,” says Pete Riley, campaign director for the latter. “Seventy-one per cent of people in a poll for Which? last summer thought supermarkets were right to avoid GM ingredients.”
However, for every survey that plays into the hands of detractors, there is another that claims public antipathy is not quite so clear cut. The bottom line is that there is relatively little conclusive evidence to suggest consumers are pro- or anti-GM. IGD research from 2008, for instance, showed just over half of consumers (52 per cent) neither supported nor opposed GM or have yet to form an opinion about the matter, while 15 per cent were strongly opposed.
While the consumer picture is unclear, the media’s approach to the technology has, apparently, turned around. Vivian Moses, a visiting professor of biotechnology at King’s College in London, has been tracking coverage since 2006 when the ratio of anti- to pro-GM articles was 2:1. Later that year it swung around, with two positive articles for every negative one. He says it’s stayed like that ever since.
Scientists’ attitudes remain cautionary. “We are not trying to achieve global domination by GM,” explains Professor Maurice Moloney, director of Rothamsted Research. “We’re interested in the rational exploitation of safe technology where appropriate.”
In the main, such exploitation has largely focused on the big commodity crops, like soy and corn, though there is work on a wider variety of crops in some regions; the Chinese are, for instance, carrying out research on sweet peppers, cabbage and papaya.
The papaya has been one of the most controversial stories for the industry. The SunUp GM papaya was developed in the 1990s to be resistant to a ring spot virus that was threatening Hawaii’s $11 million papaya
industry. The transgenic crop has since been credited with saving the industry - yet tensions still exist with thousands of trees having been chopped down in an act of reported eco-terrorism just last year. Richard Manshardt, professor of horticulture at the Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences Department in Hawaii, says SunUp would rank “only as a footnote in horticultural history” had it not been for the dedication of the team that developed it: the crop took four years to develop and another seven to commercialise. He believes that genetic engineering will remain a difficult economic proposition until the regulatory climate and consumer acceptance improves.
“I don’t see that the major biotech seed companies will be expanding into fruit production soon. Most fruit trees are clonally propagated, and the seed companies would have to change their facilities into nursery operations. That leaves smaller companies or public institutions to address the needs of major tree fruit commodities, and they will be faced with large deregulation costs and uncertain demand for transgenic products.”
Solanaceous vegetables are the possible exception to this rule. But even an economic heavyweight like the potato is faced with financial and regulatory burdens which, in the current political climate in Europe, don’t add up. The Sainsbury Laboratory’s Jones explains: “The most popular potato variety in the UK is Maris Piper, but that makes up just 18 per cent of the total crop. If you want to commercialise GM potatoes that are resistant to blight then you have to jump through the same regulatory hoops for dozens of different varieties. If you’re a Monsanto, BASF or a Syngenta you need a return on your investment, and each deregulation is too expensive. We could save £3 billion a year in losses to blight in Europe, so 10 years of unnecessary delay due to excessive regulation costs £30bn.” Ironically, as Jones adds, the real beneficiaries of what he calls “NGO-inspired anti-GM neurosis” are shareholders of Bayer, Syngenta and BASF, who sell blight-control chemicals.
For now, the returns for GM remain in the big commodity crops, and those planted outside of Europe. Last month BASF announced that it is to concentrate its plant biotechnology activities on the main markets in North and South America due to a “lack of acceptance” in Europe. A spokesman says the situation is getting worse, rather than better, with the likes of Germany and France seemingly more opposed than ever to the technology.
Across Europe the subject remains a political hot potato, and the frustration of the UK industry is clear. FDF’s director of food safety and science, Barbara Gallani, says maintaining the current non-GM status of the EU could come at a cost to society: “The current situation in the EU is unsustainable. The time has come to reopen an unbiased debate about GM.” -
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