The Irish Times

Genetically Modified Foods

(Letter to the Editor of The Irish Times)

Sir,

It was with satisfaction that I read (The Irish Times, April 13th) that the main group campaigning against GM foods in the Republic, Genetic Concern, is to disband. The organisation says it has fulfilled its aim of alerting consumers to the widescale introduction of GM foods and what it considered to be unacceptable risks to humans and the environment from such produce. But this opposition to GM crops is deeply misguided and may have disastrous consequences. By promulgating irrational fears and prejudices, it may thwart the potentially enormous benefits of this technology.

The public is clearly sceptical about GM foods, and the strength of reaction against the technology is intensifying. There is a common perception that GM foods are dangerous, threatening, unnecessary and an offence against the natural order. The sense of foreboding is encapsulated in the term "Frankenfoods". Yet the reality is that none of the fears that have been raised stand up to a critical examination of the facts.

In scientific terms, the anti-GM argument remains devoid of any real substance: There is still no real evidence of any environmental damage caused by growing GM crops. Nobody has died; in fact, nobody has been known to suffer so much as a stomach upset as a consequence of eating GM foods. Yet, anti-GM hysteria gathers momentum in the media, crop trials continue to be destroyed by vandals and organised opposition continues to grow. Europe's political leaders, rather than providing enlightened, progressive leadership on the issue, instead pander to the hysteria and cave in to the demands of the environmentalists and self-appointed consumer lobbyists.

Those who suffer most as a consequence are not the biotechnology corporations such as Monsanto, but the poorest and most vulnerable of the world's populations, whose future capacity to feed themselves and their families is being seriously undermined. The potential of biotechnology to boost food production, increase the availability of calories, advance human nutrition and meet the challenge of feeding the world's growing population is threatened by foolish and myopic campaigns to curb innovation and human adaptability.

Eventually, commercially produced GM foods will become commonplace and the Luddite mentality of the Greens will be exposed for the folly that it is; but that will happen later rather than sooner. Meanwhile, people in the developing world will continue to die unnecessarily. In the words of A.A. Gill: "Dying for your own principles is laudatory; being made to die for someone else's is ecological."

Yours, etc.,

Damian Byrne
Belvedere Place
Mountjoy Square
Dublin