GM crops are good for the environment

My Times column on GM crops:

The news that Britain could soon grow genetically
modified crops commercially is a victory for common sense over
irrational opportunism, and also for the environment over
pollution.

Under pressure from the European Union’s health and consumer
commissioner, Tonio Borg, and Britain’s environment secretary, Owen
Paterson, the EU is on the brink of ceding control of the issue to
national governments. That suits countries such as France and
Austria, who are implacably opposed to GM crops, and Britain, which
is not.

It is now clear that the opposition to GM crops has been
counter-productive for the environment as well as harmful to the
economy and the consumer. It has left us more reliant on pesticides
than other parts of the world. For instance, potatoes currently
require spraying with fungicides up to 15 times a season. Each
spraying costs money, burns diesel, compacts soil and kills
innocent fungal bystanders. Breeding blight-resistant potatoes the
old fashioned way has proved difficult. By the time it is achieved,
the blight is already immune to the resistance.

However, doing it the GM way proved straightforward for the Sainsbury
Laboratory in Norwich, and promises stronger and longer resistance,
because it is possible to introduce a cassette of several
resistance genes. These come from wild plants in the same genus as
the potato, which disposes of one source of opposition — that it’s
an unnatural cross. The new GM variety probably could have been
developed years earlier if the eco-vandals had not driven much of
that kind of ground-breaking research abroad.

Incidentally, the very phrase “genetic modification” is getting
harder to define. It used to mean bringing genes in from other
species, but what about when genes are brought in from a species in
the same genus (as in the potato example)? Or, as will increasingly
be the case, when existing genes within the crop species are edited
rather than replaced? And why do the complex regulations about GM
not apply to plants whose genes have been deliberately but randomly
modified by gamma rays, as has happened to many common “non-GM” and
even organic varieties?

Remember, organic bean sprouts killed 51 people in one E coli outbreak in
Germany in 2011. GM food has killed nobody. There’s now simply no
way to argue with a straight face, after billions of GM meals have
been eaten all round the world, that the technology is a threat to
our health. The reverse is actually the case.

Purple tomatoes, rich in anti-cancer agents, have been created in Norwich, but they will be grown and
sold in Canada, because we in this country are still denied such
health benefits thanks to green campaigners.

The need for genetic modification is ever more urgent. The EU,
in thrall to the mad precautionary principle — which argues for
weighing the risks but not the benefits of innovation — is
gradually outlawing many effective agro-chemicals used
against weeds such as black grass, insects such as aphids and fungi
such as yellow rust, all of which threaten the yields of British
wheat crops on a huge scale. Farmers are facing a galloping
yellow-rust crisis as resistance spreads and the armoury of allowed
treatments shrinks. GM rust-resistant varieties of wheat are still
five years away, because that’s how long it takes to get regulatory
approval.

Elsewhere in the world, where GM crops can be grown that are
resistant to pests, the butterflies, bees and birds are back in the
fields in bigger numbers. When the pest resistance is inside the
plant, only pests encounter it. (Incidentally, the same applies to
neonicotinoid insecticides, the banning of which, after a year of
increasing bee numbers, makes no sense: the alternatives are the
more damaging, externally applied pyrethroids.)

So this is a technology that is safe for human health, better
for the environment, more effective than the alternative and
economically beneficial to consumers and farmers. Let the French
ban it if they want to.

The opposition to GM crops was never really much about safety or
environmental protection. It was always chiefly motivated by
dislike of corporate “control” of seeds, a bogeyman that suited the
environmental movement as a rallying cry with which to raise funds.
It was a meaningless slogan, since companies also supply non-GM
seeds, not to mention tractors and wellington boots. But the beauty
of the campaign, as far as the likes of Greenpeace was concerned,
was that it led directly to heavy-handed and expensive compliance
regimes, that meant that only large corporations could afford to
apply for approval for GM crops, which then appeared to prove the
point. Rarely has an argument been more circular.

Incidentally, any doubt that money is the principal concern of
Greenpeace evaporated this month with the news that a rogue trader
in its currency trading division had lost $5.2 million betting
against the euro. Good grief! This, remember, is the organisation
that has done the most to block GM crops — including a disgraceful
campaign against the non-profit, humanitarian project in support of
vitamin-A-rich “golden” rice. This rice could prevent the deaths of
hundreds of thousands of children each year from vitamin-A
deficiency diseases. And it’s gambling with charitable donations!
It makes Goldman Sachs look like the Angel Gabriel.

In America, the GM debate might superficially appear to be
slipping slightly backwards. Two counties in Oregon have just
banned GM crops, requiring all trace of them to be removed within a
year. Once again, the reason turns out to be money. Those with an
ear close to the ground say the big green philanthropic bodies in
the USA are showing “donor fatigue” on the issue of climate change.
Quick as ever to pick up on such signs, “Big Green” has begun
changing its message to push other buttons in its search for more
funds. The perennial concern of right-on people that “they are
doing things to our food” is one of those buttons.

In short, the new campaign is based on no new science suggesting
environmental or health risks. It’s simply a sign of a movement
addicted to scaremongering and in need of new funds. Fortunately it
will not gain much traction. With 17 million farmers growing GM
crops in 28 countries, on 12 per cent of the world’s arable land,
this gene genie won’t go back in the bottle.