Six Forum: GM crops

We put your questions to Carrie Stebbings, co-ordinator of the Five Year Freeze Campaign.

Transcript

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More than half of Britons who took part in a nationwide debate said genetically modified crops should never be introduced under any circumstances

Only 2% would be happy to eat GM food.

The GM Nation report says the public mood about on GM "ranged from caution and doubt, through suspicion and scepticism, to hostility and rejection."

The government has promised to consider the 40,000 public responses before deciding whether to go ahead with commercial GM crops.

Do you think the government will listen to the public? Do you think the potential benefits of GM crops outweigh the risks?

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Transcript

Denise Mahoney:
Hello and welcome to the Six Forum with me, Denise Mahoney. Tonight, should genetically modified crops be grown here in the UK? After a six week national debate about GM food, public opinion appears to be firmly against the idea, with more than half of people taking part in the debate, saying the crops should be banned. And among those who did not reject the technology out of hand, there was concern that more time and research was needed before GM foods were planted.

But will government take heed of public opinion? What will the biotechnology industry behind the GM revolution do now to promote its foods? I'm joined by Carrie Stebbings from the campaign group Five Year Freeze. Good evening Carrie, let's go straight to the e-mails and we've had an awful lot because it's such a hot topic here in the UK. Lydia, UK asks: What exactly are the risks of eating this food? I have yet to hear any clear evidence that there are serious risks involved.

I suppose she is referring to the American experience where they've had it for eight years there without, apparently, ill-effect.

Carrie Stebbings:
The American experience is often quoted as evidence that GM is safe. But of course GM foods aren't labelled in the United States and so people can't make a choice about whether they eat them or not and nobody has been monitoring who's been eating these foods and what the effects are. So actually it's a huge experiment on the American public that nobody is looking at.

Denise Mahoney:
And you think that that will be repeated here?

Carrie Stebbings:
Well it's quite possible the science review that was commissioned by the Government has rather passed the GM debate, also concluded it was impossible to come up with experiments to test the safety of GM but they still want to go ahead with it. So again, it's going to be an experiment on the public to see what the effects are.

Denise Mahoney:
We have an e-mail from Ross Allan, UK: Would I be right in thinking that GM crops would be of most use to the Third World, where hardier crops would help to stamp out hunger, and possibly even poverty? If so, does this invalidate the view of Western citizens?

I think what he is saying is, aren't we being over-cautious and almost selfish in denying the Third World of technology?

Carrie Stebbings:
I think it's very important to look at the causes of poverty and hunger in the Third World and often those causes are due to policy decisions that are made on economic and political decisions. So it's the not the fact that there isn't enough food to feed people in the developing world.

Denise Mahoney:
Because there have been products - GM products - developed - for example I think its called the Golden Rice, where it's fortified with extra vitamins - that would help tackle malnutrition wouldn't it?

Carrie Stebbings:
Well, with the Golden Rice, it has been shown that people would actually have to eat an enormous amount of this rice to get their daily recommended allowance and it's much easier to get it from leafy vegetables and probably much better for them.

Denise Mahoney:
An e-mail has just come in - this is from Sharon who asks: Do you think that the multinationals care - I suppose she's talking about the biotech industry - that by changing the genes, they're making irreparable changes to the environment?

This is something that is of concern to the Third World that they are, as you say, being used as guinea pigs.

Carrie Stebbings:
I am sure the biotech industry would say that they do care. We would say that they're not using due caution and we dispute the rush ahead to commercialise these crops. We think that there are significant risks and once we go ahead with that decision, it's irreversible, we can't change it. So we just need to slow down a bit. Obviously the biotech industry stands to gain most from commercialisation because of their profit levels. So we would say, let's slow down, let's look at all the evidence and let's take it more slowly.

Denise Mahoney:
Maevea, UK: Why is it every time a new scientific advancement is made a group of people stamp and shout and wave red danger flags? Don't we need GM crops in order to provide for ourselves and not just the Third World, in the future?

Carrie Stebbings:
Well again we would say that GM isn't the only technology that we can investigate here. There are a lot of different ways of increasing our agriculture yields. But I think people generally feel uneasy about the way that GM is taking agriculture - it's going towards large-scale farming, putting small farmers out of business and that's not the way that we really need to go.

Denise Mahoney:
Staying with that point, here's an interesting question from Stuart Jones, UK: Almost every type of crop grown at the moment has been modified at some time in its history otherwise we would not be able to produce the yields or quality currently available. Whilst I accept that genetically altering a crop is a huge step from the far more basic types of 'modification' it is merely a result of over 40 years of research and development which has only now become popular to hate.

Essentially, he is saying that this is not a new technology - it's been going on for ever and it benefits the human race.

Carrie Stebbings:
I think the specific type of genetic modification that we're talking about now is new technology. We're talking about something that wouldn't automatically happen in nature. So we're talking about taking genes from different species and crossing them - it's not a precise science. So we just don't know what the results are going to be.

Denise Mahoney:
Here's a question about cross contamination, which is something that's been raised by the organic farming movement. This has come in from Shaun, Wales: Due to the threat of cross contamination, is it not reasonable for farmers who use GM technology to have compulsory insurance against such claims?

Now I remember reading that it was going to be virtually impossible to get such insurance because it can't possible exist because the contamination will be there.

Claire Stebbings:
That's right and this is one of the big arguments that's happening at the moment about who will actually be liable for damage and at the moment it's impossible for farmers to get insurance for growing GM. The NFU, one of the largest insurers for farmers, will not insure farmers because they say the risks are unknown, so they can't put a figure on it. There is an on-going argument about who should pay - the biotech industry won't pay, the Government doesn't want to pay and we're going to be reduced to individual farmers arguing this through the courts.

Denise Mahoney:
Is that a question, do you think, that's got to be resolved before you will lift your five year campaign?

Carrie Stebbings:
Well it's definitely one of our requests - we cannot make a decision on going ahead with commercialisation until we've worked out this whole issue of cross contamination and liability - who pays if it all goes wrong. At the moment there's a complete disagreement about how to move forward with that.

Denise Mahoney:
Here's a question that's come in from the United States - we already know that they're eating GM products - Jason Boatright asks: The most recent poll revealed that 46% of Britons oppose GM crops. Could it be that the kind of people who would be likely to attend a "nationwide debate" over GM crops would mostly be anti-GM activists?

That's a fair point - the debates I've attended myself have always been completely packed with people who are against GM crops from the outset - the Soil Association, Friends of the Earth.

Carrie Stebbings:
Well I think there's two points about that: the first one is that the results of GM Nation are completely consistent with all the opinion polls and studies that have been done over the last five or six years - that the majority of people are uneasy about GM to various degrees.

The second point would be that the GM Nation consisted of two parts: there were the open meetings, which were self-selecting participants but there was also a control group of people who had never been involved with GM before and they had to go away and find out as much as they could about GM and come back and report back their opinions and the results from both groups were remarkably similar. So it almost acts as a control and we can see that there isn't a sort of silent majority out there who thinks significantly differently.

Denise Mahoney:
We've just got time for one more question, and I think this is probably the most important question to our viewers this evening. Del in London asks: Will Tony Blair and the Government take any notice of the consultation? The Government doesn't seem to care what the public says, big business usually gets its own way.

Is that something that you think is going to happen?

Carrie Stebbings:
Well it's obviously something that we're very concerned about. One of the big things that came out in the GM Nation report today is that there's a huge lack of trust in the Government and in the biotech industry to even defend the public's view. So the Government has committed to listening to this report - they have committed to responding to it. And we feel that if they don't do that, if they don't this into account, then it's going to have serious consequences for participation of this kind in the future because if people don't see a link between participating and somebody taking notice then they just won't get involved again.

Denise Mahoney:
Well the Government has said it will make a decision shortly so we'll look out for it. Carrie Stebbings, thank you very much indeed. Goodbye.