Europe could soon be ready for genetic modification of its food crops as ministers and the food and farming industry began looking to the technology as an answer to problems of food supply.
As environment minister Phil Woolas was revealed to have met privately with the Agricultural Biotechnology Council last week, the prime minister Gordon Brown endorsed the launch of a new EU study into whether genetically modified (GM) crop production could play a part in bringing down the cost of food and called on the union to relax rules on importing GM animal feed. "In the end, the attitude to GM crops and GM food taken by consumers in our country and in any country is going to depend on the scientific and medical advice,” said Brown. “That is what we are looking for from the work of this review group."
Brown was swiftly criticised by organic body the Soil Association and environmental pressure group Friends of the Earth. “The prime minister would do better to listen to his chief scientist at Defra, professor Bob Watson who chaired the recent international agricultural assessment that concluded ‘business as usual is no longer an option’ and called for a shift to ‘agroecological’ food production,” said Soil Association director Patrick Holden, accusing Brown of being “bamboozled by PR from the agrobiotech lobby. He also said that it was “fact” that GM crops do not increase yields and that they do have “negative health impacts”.
But Séan Rickard, senior lecturer in business economics at Cranfield University and academic adviser to the government said that the Soil Association could not point to any scientific evidence to back these claims. “The organics sector has had its day in the sun,” said Rickard. “One of the reasons I think why Europeans turned their backs on GM in the early 1990s had a lot to do with BSE and the fact that the European Commission was more worried about food being oversupplied.” He said that for the next decade, the government has displayed tacit appceptance of the green agenda. “But it has been very clear since the Oxford Farming Conference two years ago when then environment minister David Miliband said that organics were a lifestyle choice, that government is thinking differently.”
And outside the fresh produce sector there is increasing evidence of food industry leaders leaning towards GM as Nestle chairman Peter Brabeck has also called for Europe to reassess its policy on the controversial technology Ian Ferguson, chair of the Food & Drink Federation is a GM advocate looking to advance debate on the issue.
Rickard believes it is just a matter of time before GM becomes acceptable to consumers in Europe. “Biotechnology has been around for a number of years and I believe it is coming of age,” he said. “We are going to have to learn to produce more from our land and GM seems to offer ways to do not only that but to make production more sustainable.”
Perhaps the prospect of real food price inflation will move more consumers and therefore the supermarkets over to the GM cause. Certainly figures that show low levels of repeat purchase of organic produce released at the Re:fresh conference in May could indicate that the climate will soon be right for GM to win consumers over. And Rickard believes that when that happens, the supermarkets in the UK will be only too happy to supply the demand with GM produce.
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