The EU Commission decision to hand over to Member States the right to decide whether to accept the production of GM crops on their territory or to ban them is a mark of desperation which will not resolve the irreconcilable divide between pro- and anti- States.   What is wrong about this contrivance is that it evades any decision on the basis of principle (i.e. whether GM food entails a risk to human health and to the environment, and how conventional and organic crops can be protected from contamination) and simply takes the unheroic line of least resistance.   And for several reasons Britain emerges from this 12-year struggle with arguably the most dishonourable record in Europe.

New Labour under Blair was gung-ho on introducing GM crops into the UK, and was only defeated when the supermarkets refused to stock GM products because the public would not shop in stores that sold GM.    The present Tory head of DEFRA, Caroline Spelman, who has never declared a conflict of interest despite having been a partner in a pro-biotechnology firm, has made clear her intention to promote and extend Labour’s pro-GM bias.   Now, as before, Britain has tried to get the EU to lift the GM ban despite the safety concerns voiced by other Member States.   Depressingly it opposed, alone in the EU, the labelling of food containing traces of GM material which was aimed at giving shoppers the opportunity to make an informed choice.

Despite clear and consistent evidence that UK consumers do not want genetic modification of what they eat and prize organic food when they can get it, the UK government has acted as the Trojan horse for the agro-tech industry in Europe.   It has tried to undermine EU laws stopping entry to the EU of illegal GMOs, and second only to the US it provides the biggest funds, £80m a year, to the international Cgiar GM research network.

The biotech industry continues to argue the merits of GM on three grounds – that it increases yields, it reduces the use of pesticides, and it is needed to feed the growing population in developing countries.   As has been repeatedly shown, all three arguments are false.   Evidence from Canada and Argentina shows that after an initial 5-year period yields fell and pesticide use markedly increased to counter volunteers and superweeds, whilst food problems in the developing world arise, not from the lack of GM, but from gross maldistribution of land, corrupt governments mismanaging the economy, and a discriminatory trading system.

The real driving force behind the GM campaign is the relentless corporate pressure from the huge agro-chemical multinationals including Monsanto, Bayer, Syngenta and Pioneer because of the colossal bonanza that would be offered them if they could corner the world’s food supply.   But contaminating the food chain and overriding consumers’ manifest desire for pure and wholesome food is and always will be unacceptable.

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