Prince Not So Charming About Genetically Manipulated Crops

Last week, the heir to the British throne, HRH Prince Charles, spoke out about Genetically Manipulated crops and their many and varied impacts on food production.

Recognised as an opponent of industrialised agriculture, the Prince's comments come at an opportune time, and will surely re-ignite debate in the GM arena as scientists plead for more sites to run tests on, while opponents continue the fight, even taking to destroying crops at one test site earlier this year in the UK.

The article appeared in London's Daily Telegraph, after an exclusive interview with journalist Jeff Randall.

 

Listen: The Prince of Wales speaks out

In the interview Prince Charles accused firms of conducting a "gigantic experiment I think with nature and the whole of humanity which has gone seriously wrong", and he goes on to say "What we should be talking about is food security not food production - that is what matters and that is what people will not understand.

"And if they think its somehow going to work because they are going to have one form of clever genetic engineering after another then again count me out, because that will be guaranteed to cause the biggest disaster environmentally of all time."

Small farmers, in particular, would be the victims of "gigantic corporations" taking over the mass production of food.

"I think it's heading for real disaster," the Prince said.

As you can imagine, the story has bought a raft of comments - two of which appear below, and yes they support my biased view.

I studied plant genetics at the University of California at Berkeley with many professors who also had their own biotech companies. Later I got a masters in public health studying environmental health at Tulane University. The science behind the GM scenes is fascinating and may I say that plants are far more interesting than animals when studying genetics. In the end though, I decided that nature is more efficient, more diverse and knows what she's doing 100 times better than we do. GM not only jeopardizes the lives of farmers and the environment (which of course will eventually affect all of us), but there is some evidence that GM foods may be immediately harmful for human and animal health. Check out this website, link. I haven't reviewed the literature myself, but my family who are livestock breeders have heard anecdotal evidence of the damage GM may do to animal reproductive health. The bottom line is, don't mess with mother nature.
Anna Spector

We've been in the cattle business for nearly 100 years, here in west Texas. We have had mixed results with GM corn feed and it's dropped our birth rate by double digits in some years. We've gone back to grass feeding because the beef tastes better, sells easier, and we're not always fretting about the result of passing down GM to our customers, usually without their knowledge. Most people here in the USA don't even realize that most of what we eat here comes from GM corn...either in feed or food.
Biddy

Here in Australia, the debate also still has a way to go, despite two State Governments lifting bans to grow GM crops earlier this year. Consumer negativity is the largest hurdle that GM proponents need to jump, and with labelling laws in this country about to legislate for GM content to be included on food label products, the debates could be raging for sometime yet.

Comments

[Andrew the Organic Maven]

Hey Laura.

Glad you like the post and thanks for the links.

And you are so right about the labelling laws. On the small scale , I'm so glad the we are in a position to grow food ourselves and share it with other like-minded people.

Cheers
Andrew

[Laura Z]

You've got to get the labeling laws in place. And if you let them get off by not labeling ingredients like they do in the US you will NEVER know what you are buying! They keep it off our labels because they know Americans won't buy FrankenFoods. Keep up the good work! I'm putting links to you all over my site.

I mentioned Prince Charles on my garden blog too. I got a comment from a GM shill telling me how jealous Australian farmers are of the US. Such lies they tell!

[Andrew the Organic Maven]

Hmmm... thanks Darren for commenting.

Given that Princes and other heads of state are usually masters of diplomacy, for me his comments went as far as he could go without actually naming Monsanto - "Small farmers, in particular, would be the victims of "gigantic corporations" taking over the mass production of food."

Maybe we need to send him a copy of the just released DVD "The World According To Monsanto" which will lift the profile of the impact GM foods have in the US. Bring it on, I say.

[David Gerard]

The point Charles missed is that GM is for Monsanto to take ownership of everything. notnews.today.com/2008/08/17/prince-must-prove-anti-gm-claim/