ProBiotech

Britain 'Lags Behind' On GM Crops

(Letter to the Editor of The Times)

Sir,

The current brouhaha over the accidental planting of crops containing tiny amounts (less than 1 per cent) of genetically modified seed (report and letter, May 25) demonstrates the total lack of perspective in the UK over the history and benefits of biotechnology in agriculture.

The first biotechnology plants were developed by 1983; the first food product came on the market in 1990, and the first full food product enhanced through biotechnology, the FLVR SAVR (trademark) tomato, was on supermarket shelves by 1994. Between 1996 and 1999, the world commercial acreage of biotechnology crops rose from 4.3 to more than 100 million acres, with 81 million acres in Canada and the US, 16 million acres in Argentina, and one million acres in both China and Australia. The 1999 Canada/US figure included 28.3 million acres of corn, 35 million acres of soybeans, and 5.3 million acres of oilseed rape (canola). In 2000, 52 per cent of the US soybean crop is predicted to be genetically modified.

Throughout this long history there has not been one single substantiated problem with either human nutrition or the environment. In the US alone, there have been more than 5,000 full trials and over 24,000 field trials. In the near future, biotech crops will be coming on the market, not just with producer and environmental benefits, but with clear consumer benefits.

We are way behind the game; the sooner we complete our own meagre trials and move to full commercialisation the better for all of us. Only then will common sense stop being "contaminated" by hysteria.

Yours faithfully,

Philip Stott
Professor of Biogeography
School of Oriental and African Studies
University of London