Farmer's Guardian

Like It Or Not, GM Food Is Already Here

I've always felt that the arable boys were a bunch of big blouses who spent too much time in bed and on holiday, and so they've proved when their land and trials plots have been invaded by the anti-GM prats. Judging by the Press photographs they all stood back grinning while the demonstration plots at Cereals '99 were trashed. A few unfriendly cuffs around the ears may have been a more convincing way of dissuading them from their anti-social activities.

The companies behind the trials are no better, it's past time that they hauled these wreckers before the courts. It cannot be too difficult to calculate the financial loss from a disrupted trial, so civil cases for damages could be pursued.

The whole GM debate has rapidly sunk into a morass of myth, lies and exaggeration from both sides. As with the BSE debacle, facts are hard to come by but in my opinion two facts are already established. Firstly, genetic manipulation is here to stay and our industry must take a scientific look at it's role to play in our future production. We cannot join HRH and the Flat Earth Society in saying that British farmers should not investigate new technologies, all our competitors do and some have already grasped this one.

Of course, there should be properly controlled experiments and field scale trials but if the Ministry continues to publish the whereabouts and the law continues to ignore the plant-pullers when can we ever hope to see some worthwhile complete research? The other established fact is that some 40 per cent of our imported soya is derived from GM plants so it is already in our diets, like it or not.

There may be plenty of supermarkets bleating that they've excluded GM derivatives from certain lines but with their track record of inadequate labelling and misinformation to the consumer you'd have to be a complete idiot to believe them. Take Marks and Sparks, for instance, who claim that all their food lines will be GM-free. That means that every single pig, lamb, chicken, turkey, steer, heifer, salmon etc., they process and sell will be fed a diet guaranteed free of GM soya which is currently twice the price of ordinary soya, and most importantly they can prove it. Yeah and I'm a 16-year-old Afro Eskimo girl in drag.

One of the biggest flies in the GM ointment is the organic mob. Don't get me wrong, I've no quarrel with those horny old sons of the soil who have been beavering away for years selling their wares and myths to tiny niche markets of nutcases with money. They did me no harm and made themselves a tidy living from doing what they believe.

The new style organic milk producer is a different animal altogether, desperately trying to generate market share by vociferously knocking conventional production and making exaggerated claims about his product. Let's be clear, organic milk is indistinguishable from ordinary milk in terms of taste, hygienic and compositional quality; it's not as fresh because it's being lugged vast distances for processing; and it never meets our Somatic Cell Count standards. One enthusiastic convertor writing in a sister publication stated his normal was 300,000 cells/ml, well that's a 1/2p penalty band for us, and his April count was 7,497,000 cells/ml. Well that's rank and he must have dug it out of the milk tank with a shovel. God help whoever drank it. My current rolling average is 76,000 cells/ml.

Up to 20 per cent of the cows diet can be non-organic and they can use exactly the same medications as I can, albeit with long withdrawal times. The feeding and management of cows need only be organic for 12 weeks prior to conversion while the land must be in transition for two years, and what I cannot fathom out is why some of the conversion cereals I've seen still have tramlines in. Perhaps when fitted with navigation lights they aid night driving. It's one thing for the Soil Association to police believers but entirely another job with the bandwagoners.

Bringing the cows in this morning was a positive delight, cloudless sky, loads of grass and bulging udders. The last four beasts were heifers just calved and they're stunners. What a pity that I have to go and spoil this rural idyll by selling milk. May milk went for the princely sum of 14.702p per litre which neatly matches what I received in May 1982. Still what's 17 years between friends when that nice Mr Blair thinks the consumer is being ripped off and his friend Mr Byers and pals at the Competition Commission conclude that 'consumers pay more for fresh milk than they should'.

Consumers pay 27p per pint for milk in the supermarket. I receive 7p. Highland Spring water costs 22p per pint and runs out of the ground for free. Beer in my local has just risen 20p per pint to pounds 1.60. Those facts should be embossed in raised writing on the hard back covers of the CC report and then they could be inserted sideways up Cabinet Ministers' back passages for safe storage.