The Scotsman

Genetic Crops To Prevail

Sound science and pragmatism will get genetically modified crops accepted in the UK, a leading biotechnologist said yesterday.

Dr Paul Rylott, a scientist with AgrEvo, one of the major biotechnology companies, made his comments after delivering a paper to a conference in Edinburgh, organised by the Scottish Agricultural College, on genetically modified crops and the environment.

He said: "I hope the Government will be quite robust with protesters who try to destroy field trials because I believe that eventually field trial evaluation will allow everyone to see the benefits of GM crops." Many people distrusted multinational companies and anything they tried to do, and probably always would, he said. Earlier, 70 delegates had been told by another speaker that more than 80 per cent of GM patents were held by only 13 companies worldwide.

Dr Rylott said: "I think that in general sound science will prevail. Pragmatism will prevail. In a few years time I am convinced that three technologies will be working well side by side - conventional farming, GM crop growing and organic farming." He could not understand why organic growers had joined the protest lobby against GM crops. It must make sense, he said, to have crops with in-bred resistance to diseases such as potato blight, which could wipe out an organic crop where chemical control could not be used.

A similar claim for the potential benefits of GM was made by Steve Hughes, a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. He told the conference: "The need for campaigning groups to promote their agendas by vilification of GM technology, and those who practice it, has been particularly disheartening for those concerned about rural poverty in parts of the world."

Neither speaker convinced Sue Mayer, director of GeneWatch UK, who said that enormous public opposition to GM crops in Britain was a natural reaction. She said: "This is a technology where the potential for irreversible environmental effects, or on human health, is accepted. There is considerable scientific uncertainty. It is dominated by institutions remote from most people and denies them choice."

Field trials were a source of great concern, not least because they compared GM crops against crops grown under an intensive system of agriculture which was itself causing great concern to many people. Today the conference will hear Patrick Holden of the Soil Association and a strong opponent of GM technology.