From Meredith Lloyd-Evans, BioBridge Associates
In response to Peter Melchett’s appeal to European Union regulations as the fount of all wisdom on whether gene flow really matters, I believe it is worth pointing out that the EU has never had a sensible approach to the risks of genetic modification (25 January, p 26).
The entire basis of the precautionary approach to GM is based on total hogwash. A gene for herbicide resistance introduced into a plant by conventional techniques – by embryo rescue, protoplast fusion or irradiation, as well as by inbreeding from weedy relatives – can be distributed anywhere and everywhere with no problems, but one produced by genetic engineering can’t.
Our entire environment, including organic food, is loaded with bacteria and other organisms that carry many of the marker sequences, antibiotic resistance genes and pesticide-metabolising genes that anti-GM nuts complain of, and have forced governments to legislate against.
So any survey of plants, crops and foods that looks for such “foreign DNA” sequences is bound to come to the conclusion that GM has irrevocably spread and that “big business” has “contaminated organic purity”. This is not a sensible way to walk forward in the world.
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Cambridge, UK
