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The Rise and Fall of GM -- TranscriptChannel 4 Television NARRATOR In Havana Professor Van Montagu is regarded as a hero, and in recognition of his scientific genius, they honour him with the title Father of Genetically Modified Food. Demonstrations in Britain and the US have marked the campaign against so-called globalisation. Environmentalist and other groups say they want to protect people in the Third World from capitalist multinationals, and the multinationals who have been criticised the most are the biotechnology companies, like Monsanto, that produce GM. The campaign against genetic modification has been immensely successful. One after another food retailers (first in Europe and now in America), have banished GM produce from their shelves. GM farmers now struggle to find buyers. Politicians who once defended GM scientists, have now publicly distanced themselves. But GM scientists say the campaign is based not on sound science but rather on prejudice; that it is being waged by people in the affluent West, who have a self-indulgent and irrational disdain for science and modern food production; and that the widespread acceptance of environmentalist arguments by ordinary people is effectively prohibiting a technology which might have transformed the developing world. Journalist Richard North has followed the GM debate in the media. RICHARD NORTH I don't blame them, because they are told rubbish by everyone they think is trustworthy. You know, nice people read nice left-wing or liberal leaning newspapers that pump out this tripe. John Wafula works for Kenya's Agricultural Research Institute. JOHN WAFULA We have very brilliant scientists here in Kenya in this technology, knowledgeable in this technology. We know the technology is not dangerous, and for forces of superstition and ignorance out there to block this technology is simply catastrophic . NARRATOR Although to environmentalists Baron Professor Van Montagu is the father of much-hated Frankenfood, his reception in Havana could hardly have been more warm and enthusiastic. This is because the Cubans believe GM holds the key to transforming agriculture in developing countries. PROFESSOR VAN MONTAGU The GM food is made from what we call genetically modified plants — that is plants where in a laboratory one was able to put in new genes. So in a laboratory we can now make plants that have better protection against diseases, that have higher yields, that have new properties that are important for nutrition and especially for the developing countries. That is tremendously important. NARRATOR The Cubans are unable to afford modern agricultural inputs like pesticides and chemical fertilisers, and as a result they suffer from very low agricultural productivity. But in GM technology they see a way of turning things around, and so have devoted a great deal of their resources to building their own expertise in this area. Dr Carlos Borroto is the scientist in charge of this research. DR CARLOS BURROTO This scientific technology can solve a lot of problems for humanity. You have better foods, healthier foods and you have more foods. This is why we in Cuba are working for this technology — we believe in it. NARRATOR The history of GM dates back to the late 1970s when at the University of Gent in Belgium Professor Van Montagu observed a type of soil bacterium which created tumours in plants. In 1980, he demonstrated that this agrobacterium inserted its own DNA into the DNA of the plant from which it was feeding, thereby transforming its genetic structure. But he emphasises that all he did was to highlight a type of genetic modification which already occurs naturally. PROFESSOR VAN MONTAGU What drove me to do this type of science is the same as what drives everybody in science. It is curiosity to see how nature functions. And if you see that the bacteria makes tumours on plants, you want to know how does it do it? And if you learn how it does it then you understand that this bacteria is doing genetic engineering. NARRATOR But the question remained, could agrobacterium's natural capacity to modify plants genetically be harnessed to transfer other genes into plants. The person who solved this problem was Mexican scientist Luis Herrera-Estrella, who was at the time a member of Prof Van Montagu's team at the University of Gent. In 1983, two years after Marc Van Montagu's discovery, Luis used agrobacterium to transfer an antibiotic resistance gene into a tobacco plant and in doing so became the first person to create an artificially, genetically modified plant. LUIS HERRERA-ESTRELLA When I started working in Belgium it was known that agrobacterium was capable of transferring genes to plant cells. But the big unknown was whether we could express genes from other organisms in plant cells. NARRATOR Luis decided to replace the offending tumour-causing DNA from the agrobacterium with an antibiotic resistance gene. He then applied the agrobacterium to a tobacco plant, knowing that if the experiment worked the modified tobacco plant cells would be able to survive treatment with antibiotics. LUIS HERRERA-ESTRELLA And it was really gratifying to see that these experiments worked, because when we did the first gene we knew that any other gene could be expressed in plant cells, so that this technology could have a really great impact for agriculture. NARRATOR In close competition with Van Montagu's team in Belgium was Rob Fraley, one of a small group of genetic scientists at Monsanto. They were excited by the breakthrough of gene transfer, but they still faced the challenge of demonstrating that it could be turned into something useful and profitable. ROB FRALEY All of a sudden we knew right then that the door had been opened, that this technology could now be used to improve plants in ways that had never been thought to be possible before. When I joined Monsanto there were six of us working in the agro-biotech area, but back in the 1980s no one really had a clue whether this technology could be useful for group plants or whether it would have a benefit. So there were a lot of scientific challenges and that's when the group at Monsanto came into being and that was the challenges we faced. NARRATOR It wasn't difficult for Monsanto to find agricultural problems. Even in the mid-west of America there are huge natural barriers to producing a plentiful, healthy crop. Greg Guenther owns a 3,000 acre family farm in Illinois. His main crops are soya and corn which he grows for export. And the two biggest threats to Greg's livelihood are the same as those facing farmers everywhere: weeds and insects. In the US, farmers spend over $8bn a year on chemical insecticides and herbicides to defend their crops. And if they didn't do this, yields would be a fraction of what they are, and the food would be less safe to eat. GREG GUENTHER The insects come in when the corn is growing. They bore through the outer protective layer of the corn stalk, and get into the soft inside layer. Once that protection is breached and a hole is there or damage is there, all kinds of pathogens find their way into that plant. These pathogens do everything from cause afflatoxin which is a deadly product that is a natural occurrence in corn, to stalk wilt and damage to the crop that causes the ears to literally fall off the corn plant before we harvest it, or it causes the entire corn plant to just fall over and be unharvestable. NARRATOR But could GM be used to protect plants from natural attacks like this? At the University of Washington in St Louis, Prof Roger Beechy, won backing from Monsanto to see if he could develop a virus resistant plant. After five years of unsuccessful experiments, the breakthrough came in 1986, after he succeeded in moving a gene from a mosaic virus into cells from tomato plants. PROFESSOR ROGER BEECHY We then grew the plants in the greenhouse and inoculated them with the virus. We came back several days later — no big deal. Came back another week or 10 days later and were absolutely stunned to see the plants that carried the new gene — the foreign gene that we had inserted — totally resistant to infection, whereas the plants that were not modified were sick. Well you can imagine what that did to the rest of us. We brought people down to the greenhouse and said 'do you see what I see?' And when everybody had seen it and we all believed it, we had a party. What else do you do but celebrate and somebody went out and got a 6 pack of beer then somebody got another 6 pack and we had a great time that day. NARRATOR But Professor Beechy's was only the first of a series of historic breakthroughs. The following year, in 1987, Monsanto announced that it had finally succeeded in engineering the first artificially insect-resistant crop plant, using a gene from a bacterium which is naturally insect resistant. The following year, Monsanto announced that it had used GM to create herbicide resistance in a soya bean plant. Scientists were fully aware that such a powerful new technology might carry dangers, so their innovations still faced many years of laboratory testing and field trials before they could be given to farmers. But scientists had at least shown that genetic modification had the potential to transform agricultural production, in ways they could only have dreamed of a few years before. For farmers in the West, GM held the promise of greatly reduced costs, increased yields and healthier plants. But for the Third World, scientists believed GM could be a life-saving technology. If insects are a problem in the first world, in Africa they are truly devastating. The vast majority of African farmers are unable to afford pesticides and herbicides, leaving their crops prey to the most voracious weeds and defenceless against ravenous insects such as locusts, leafhoppers, white fly and stem borers. NARRATOR At Kenya's Agricultural Research Institute Dr Cyrus Ndiritu is trying to adapt Western agricultural technologies to help Kenyan farmers. He says insects in Africa also carry a vast array of viruses which can decimate a farmer's crop. DR CYRUS NDIRITU If you do not do anything about the insects you will lose more than 50% of your crop to worms and pests in the field — much more than that. Even stored grain will be destroyed by insects. So you are looking at a very massively major challenge. You're looking at the possibility of farmers losing more than 60% of their yield potential. We have very many viruses out here. You can talk about any virus in the world and it probably exists in Africa. We have maize street virus which reduces our yields sometimes up to 100%. And this is very very severe when you come to other crops like the sweet potato, like when you come to the beans, when you come to the cassava. Mention any food crop — it has a problem with a virus, if not a virus a fungus, if not a fungus a bacteria. We're just in a greenhouse of problems. NARRATOR But African farmers also face problems which we in the affluent West have left behind. The biggest is transportation and storage. For African farmers, getting food to the market before it goes off is a mammoth task. There is little or no refrigeration or packaging, very few good roads or refrigerated lorries. It is estimated that as much as half the food harvested in countries like Kenya simply rots before it reaches the mouths of the consumer. DR CYRUS NDIRITU It's very heart breaking. I think the sadness of rural infrastructure not working in Africa is one of the most hurtful things that is going on. They have no investment for refrigeration security, they can't keep anything on the farm, be it milk, meat, eggs or vegetables. I think it is very sad that the very same people who have not enough food, most of the time see it rot. NARRATOR But in 1990 Professor Don Grierson, from the University of Nottingham, made a discovery of immense significance to the Third World. By removing a gene from a tomato, reversing it and then re-introducing it, he showed how vegetables and fruit could be made to ripen more slowly and stay fresh longer. PROFESSOR DON GRIERSON The genes that we discovered allowed us to explain what happens during ripening, not only tomatoes but many fruits from throughout the world. We also developed techniques for controlling the expression of these genes, so having understood what the genes do we then were able to slow down some or speed up others and thereby in a very precise and controlled way alter the way that fruits behave to make them more suitable for our needs. NARRATOR GM scientists say they aren't just protecting plants and making them last longer, they are also improving them. Professor Chanapatna Prakash is a plant scientist from India now working in the United States, who is addressing the problem of nutritional deficiency in poor countries. He has been using GM science to improve the nutritional content of foods which are commonly eaten in the Third World, enhancing the protein content of sweet potato, for example, by introducing a synthetic gene, similar to genes found in corn and maize. PROFESSOR CHANAPATNA PRAKASH What we are trying to do is to use the techniques of molecular biology in improving the protein quality in plants and we have chosen sweet potato primarily as it is a crop eaten by a lot of poor people around the world and is the primary source of protein in many developing countries in Africa, South Asia and the Pacific Islands. We have not only been able to improve protein quality marginally but we have increased the protein content tremendously. NARRATOR In the 17 years since Dr Luis Herrera-Estrella, first created a GM plant, many hundreds of scientists from around the world have started to use the technology to develop crops which have qualities, such as insect resistance and drought tolerance, which are useful to Third World farmers. Luis himself returned to Mexico in 1986 to address the problem of aluminium in the soil, which in the developing world reduces yields by as much as 80%. By transferring a gene from a bacterium called pseudomonas into corn and papaya plants, Luis has successfully shown how crops can be made resistant to this toxic metal. PROFESSOR LUIS HERRERA-ESTRELLA This is a huge problem. It affects about 40% of the world's arable land. It mainly affects countries which are in tropical and sub-tropical regions —Latin America, South East Asia, China, Africa. And what we are trying to do is make the plants to produce compounds that are sent to the soil which protect the plants against the toxicity of aluminium. So in this way we will protect the plant, it will grow and be more productive. NARRATOR It wasn't until 1996 after 15 years of research and testing, that scientists finally made the first GM product available to farmers. But, just as the technology was starting to be of some practical use, mounting concerns about the safety of GM food were building into a campaign which would threaten to put an end to this new science. In the late 1990s, GM scientists were working to find solutions to many of the agricultural problems faced by Third World farmers. From devastation by insects to crop failure due to drought. But just as the first exciting results from GM science were beginning to appear, fears about its safety were fuelling a campaign against GM food among green groups and in the media. Julian Borger is a journalist with The Guardian newspaper. JULIAN BORGER I think at first GM corporations got pretty much a free run from the press. Journalists were very impressed by the technology and they went along with all the promises of high yields and solutions to the problems of famine. And then I think a few people in editorial positions, for example in The Guardian, began to ask questions and say well this is interesting this poses interesting philosophical questions, and political questions. And once that questioning began in newspapers like The Guardian, it began to spread and have a very direct impact on consumer confidence. NARRATOR By 1998, GM had been adopted as a central campaign issue by environmentalist groups and hardly a week went by without genetically modified 'Frankenstein' food grabbing the headlines. One after another stories emerged about the damage GM might inflict on the environment and human health. One of the leading scientific critics of GM was Dr Mae-Wan Ho, author of the best-selling book: Genetic Engineering - Dream or Nightmare. Dr Ho is a lecturer in biology at the Open University in Milton Keynes, who has given evidence against GM at the World Bank and the United Nations. One of her principal concerns is the spread of GM pollen. DR MAE-WAN HO Pollen travels with the wind, travels with bees and other pollinators and you can't control them. The danger is, of course — the immediate one — is that they can cross-pollinate with wild species, which are weeds. The other danger is that the pollen itself carries the foreign transgenic DNA, and it gets into our honey. NARRATOR Not only will herbicide resistant GM plants cross-pollinate with weeds, says Dr Ho, but pollen from insect-resistant GM plants may effect other wildlife. Indeed, one laboratory experiment suggests that monarch butterflies from America could die from high doses of some GM pollen. It is said GM will also contaminate organic crops and honey and, worse still, when it is consumed by humans, the genes may transfer themselves into our own DNA. DR MAE-WAN HO Any piece of DNA, plasma DNA, maker DNA, all these constructs that are made, I mean they can get into all kinds of cells with the greatest of ease . You can drop it in in eye drops, you can rub it in from the skin, you can swallow it, inhale it and they will get into its cells. NARRATOR But GM scientists say all this happens already, even without GM. For example, the pollen of plants which are naturally herbicide resistant moves around, even pollen from lethally poisonous plants like Deadly Nightshade spreads around. But scientists say that pollen rarely moves very far and can only cross-pollinate with closely related species. PROFESSOR ROGER BEECHY People seem to think that pollen from one plant can cross-pollinate and therefore transfer their genes to an unrelated plant. I was giving a lecture in Dublin at Trinity College one time and I was badgered by a fellow from the audience who said 'you must be lying because we know that pollen from potatoes can contaminate rape seed and cabbages and trees, this is absolutely a dangerous thing that you're doing.' In fact the pollen from potatoes can only cross-pollinate another potato, it can't even cross-pollinate a weed that's related distantly to potatoes. NARRATOR As for GM creating superweeds and killing insects, these scientists say weeds always have and always will develop immunities to herbicides, which is why we keep developing new ones, and insects like monarch butterflies are likely to be affected a lot more by chemical pesticides, which farmers will be forced to use if there is no GM. LUIS HERRERA-ESTRELLA Some people who argue that even eating this plant will transfer genes to the human cells or to bacterias which live in humans is also very unlikely. We have been eating plants for millions of years, if the transfer of genes from plants to humans could occur we already would be green and photosynthetic, and that hasn't happened. NARRATOR What also alarmed opponents of GM was the news that one biotechnology company was patenting a so-called Terminator seed, which is good for one harvest only, in order to protect their investment. Among their fears was that terminator plants might contaminate other crops. But in fact no company has ever produced such a terminator seed, and even if they did it could not cross-pollinate anything. It would, by definition, be sterile. But the attack on GM science that really grabbed the headlines came when a researcher Arpad Pusztai fed genetically modified potatoes to rats, and claimed to have observed an adverse effect on their health. However Dr Pusztai's experiment has been criticised as unreliable by scientific colleagues. John Gatehouse heads a research team of 20 GM scientists, and has been working on GM since 1987. He was one of Dr Pusztai's early collaborators. DR JOHN GATEHOUSE I've been unable to accept the results that Dr Pusztai has claimed for his experiments, because I know the data involved and the data that he has produced does not support the conclusions he has come to. NARRATOR Dr Pusztai's experiment was reviewed by a panel of scientists from The Royal Society, who criticised it on several grounds: that the GM potatoes contained 20% less protein than the non-GM potatoes which were fed to the control group of rats, that the two groups of potatoes were also chemically different in other ways, and that the final differences between the two groups of rats were either too small to be statistically significant or did not form any discernible pattern. Dr Pusztai has rejected many of the Royal Society's criticisms but has nevertheless admitted that his experiment does not show that GM is in any way unsafe to humans. DR JOHN GATEHOUSE Dr Pusztai says that his experiments don't actually show that GM crops are necessarily harmful. Well I wish he would say that a lot louder and a lot more often, because certainly the anti-GM lobby have taken his experiments to mean that that's the case, whether he thinks it is or whether he doesn't. NARRATOR But opponents of GM like Dr Mae-Wan Ho argue that even though there may be no evidence that GM is harmful, even the suspicion that it might be harmful is reason enough to stop its introduction. This has been called the precautionary principle. DR MAE-WAN HO Pusztai himself doesn't actually say we have definitive results that the transgenic potatoes we tested are harmful, and of course his results were criticised because they say 'Well there is no evidence that it's harmful'. But it's the other way round, the onus is to say that if there is even any suspicion that it's not safe, it should be withdrawn. It is ludicrous to say that we have to show it is harmful — that we've got to count bodies before we can withdraw something or ban something. It's like saying that 8,000 babies have to be born with truncated limbs before we say there is scientific evidence that thalidomide is harmful. Do we actually want that? JULIAN BORGER I think what is noticeable about the current anti-GM mood is it goes beyond the scientific data available. There is very little scientific evidence that GM foods are harmful either today or in a hundred years but there was that sense that we were entering the unknown which I think had the most powerful impact on the public mood. NARRATOR It is of course possible that future field trials might indicate some adverse environmental consequences of using GM, but if we are to apply the precautionary principle rigorously, Professor Prakash says we should be banning a lot of things before GM. PROFESSOR CHANAPATNA PRAKASH We have had millions of acres of GM crops being grown, millions of tons of GM food that we have eaten in the past two years and not a single instance of indigestion or a rash or anything has been reported. By the same token, if you are so paranoid about food safety then you should really be banning organic food by using the precautionary principles because there is far more greater risk of E-coli contamination in your food using organic food than the GM food. NARRATOR At the home of Lady Conran in Holland Park, members of the anti-GM lobby group Women Say No to GMO have gathered to discuss their campaign against GM food. They are not convinced by the weight of scientific evidence supporting GM. LADY CONRAN The science is focused on making money now. BONNIE SOANES The science is — completely. I've seen that. LADY CONRAN It's funded by the people who want to make the profits and it's focused on making money. BONNIE SOANES But for me there is a morality in that thought. It's not about the science, because I don't understand the science, it's about the morality of that thought. And you rely on your intuitions, your emotions and your instincts and you basically say 'I don't trust it, stop'. NARRATOR The Women Say No to GMO campaign is supported by an impressive number of influential people, including politicians such as Glenys Kinnock and Joan Ruddock, celebrities like Jerry Hall, Julia Carling, Bel Mooney, Jenny Seagrove, food writers and broadcasters like Rose Gray, Jancis Robinson and Marguerrite Patten, and Lady Neill, chairman of the British Housewives League. BONNIE SOANES Well I'll start. I don't understand the science, I only understand my basic emotions and instincts. And through not understanding the science I have come to very instinctive conclusions about what I believe in in terms of the development of GM technology, which is — I don't trust it and I want to wait and I want more time. HELEN BROWNING I think the problem with the science is, as far as I understand, is that it's still very embryonic. We don't have full knowledge yet of the genetic structures of all the plants and animals that we're playing around with, and we don't have any real idea about how, when you insert a gene into the DNA, how that's going to affect other genes, and what it's going to turn on and turn off. What we do know is that genes tend to work in groups — they don't work as individual structures — and so we need, in my view, a lot more information, a lot more understanding of how these things do operate before we can actually start playing around with them. NARRATOR But while the public perception might be that we don't know enough to be meddling with nature in this way, GM scientists argue that compared with traditional plant breeding, GM represents a huge leap forward in our understanding of how plants work. Traditional plant breeding, about which most of us feel very comfortable, involves breeders mixing thousands of genes from one plant with thousands of genes from another plant with very little idea of what the result will be. GM on the other hand involves transferring only one or two genes about which we know a great deal. Scientists say this is infinitely more precise and safe than anything we have done before. PROFESSOR DEREK BURKE People often criticise this new technology because they say it's not precise enough, we don't know enough about it. We actually know a great deal about what's going on, we know exactly where the genes are going, and what the adjacent genes are. They seem quite concerned about this but quite happy to accept the products of conventional plant breeding where you put two sets of 25,000 genes together and you mix them up in a bag and you see what happens. Not only do you mix them up, but you heavily irradiate them with X-rays so they're full of mutigenised genes and we mix those up as well. If that's a satisfactory process, what's wrong with GM? PROFESSOR DON GRIERSON Great play has been made of the suggestion that we don't understand enough. But we've been studying many GM plants for one and a half decades now and we understand a tremendous amount about a whole range of genes. Uncertainty is part of the stock in trade of the scaremongerers, but it's just not true that we don't know enough. We know much more than we do about conventional breeding, we have a much greater understanding, we can change plants with much greater precision, we can do it faster, we can do it better and we can do it safer. NARRATOR Scientists say we can also do more with GM than with conventional breeding. We could for instance transfer an anti-freeze gene from an arctic flounder to a crop plant, to make it more resistant to cold weather. This has been attacked by some critics, who consider transferring genes between different species to be unnatural. DR MAE-WAN HO In conventional breeding you are always mixing, you're always crossing species that are more closely related than what they are now. You know you can basically make artificial combinations of genes and cross species barriers that you never imagined you could cross. NARRATOR However, GM scientists point out that even in nature the same genes are often found in very different species. So for example around 35% of the genes found in humans can also be found in plants. Indeed we humans share around 50% of our genes with fruit flies. Different species share so many genes in common because all life on earth has a common ancestry. LUIS HERRERA-ESTRELLA This has been criticised because some people say that it's not acceptable to have animal genes in plants and that this might offend a number of people who oppose this — for instance people who are vegetarian and don't want to eat animal products. So this plant now contains animal genes, they feel offended. But they should know that about 60% of the plant genes have very similar copies in animals. So having one more gene which shares something directly with an animal gene won't actually change anything. If people don't want to change anything which resembles animals they won't find anything to eat, because even bacteria shares a lot of genetic information with animals. NARRATOR GM scientists also object to the notion that this is an untested technology. Although GM was first developed in 1981 it wasn't until 1996 that it became available to farmers, after an estimated 25,000 field trials and many times that number of laboratory trials. GM products have also had to pass inspection by independent regulatory and advisory committees. According to Britain's Ministry for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, these include the Committee on Medical Aspects of Food Policy, the Committee on Toxicity, the Advisory Committee on Genetic Modification and many more. And these committees have their counterparts in every other major country looking at GM, as well as European and other internationally funded bodies. PROFESSOR CHANAPATNA PRAKASH It's absurd to say that GM crops have not been tested enough. We have hundreds and hundreds of scientists working on the safety of GM food for the past 15 years going through thousands of laboratory tests with so many different products on the market now that it's preposterous to say that this GM food has not been tested. DR MAE-WAN HO Millions of acres of crops have already been grown and people have consumed tons of this food and nobody is dying yet. They are not speaking as scientists. Where is the control population for people who have consumed genetically engineered food? There has been no segregation or labelling, so how can you tell who has consumed and who hasn't? People are dying all the time, do we know what they are dying of? NARRATOR There are three GM products which have been approved for sale in Britain, though only two are currently available: soya beans and an enzyme used for curing cheese. Professor Derek Burke was in charge of a team of scientists advising the government on the safety of these products. PROFESSOR DEREK BURKE Basically we brainstormed, we would get about a foot high of material, papers, background documents, results from the company that was making the application. And we would go through this and ask 'Could anything go wrong?' 'Is it stable?', 'What would possibly go wrong?' and think, and then we would go back to the company and ask for more information if we had any concerns. My conclusions about the three GM foods on sale in Britain is that they are as safe as the conventional product and we cannot foresee any way in which they could harm the consumer. NARRATOR But despite the fact that so many independent groups of scientists have declared GM to be safe, the media campaign against GM has continued regardless. PROFESSOR DEREK BURKE I've found it hard going with the journalists this last year. The science journalists are splendid. They will phone me up, they will ask for background briefing, I'll explain what's going on, I'll spell out pros and cons. But I have also had journalists who ring me up and say 'I have been told by to write an anti-GM story by my editor — now what can you tell me?' Now whatever I say, however I try to persuade them, they will print that anti-GM story. So there is either bias there or such a determination to sell newspapers that they don't care whether it's true or not. NARRATOR But for many campaigners, their opposition to GM is not based on science but rather ideology. In particular, anti-GM demonstrators at the World Trade talks at Seattle were opposed to free trade and the power of so-called multinationals. BONNIE SOANES But isn't that what the demonstrations at the World Trade Organisations were about. They were emotional, they were intuitive. You know they didn't understand the science — they just knew what they felt. The only role model we have is capitalism, and that's what the World Trade Organisation demonstrations were about. LADY CONRAN And capitalism seems to be running wild, doesn't it? BONNIE SOANES Absolutely — it's an untamed animal. NARRATOR Capitalist biotech companies like Monsanto have been accused of monopolising the world seed market and forcing farmers to buy their products. JULIAN BORGER You have farmers complaining that their local seed merchant only stocks one form of seed, and I think what we've seen in the US is the degree of choice shrink very rapidly as GM seeds and GM technology took over the market. NARRATOR Greg Guenther is on his way to one of the many seed retailers in Illinois. This is the time of year that he decides what seeds to buy and to plant on his farm for next year's harvest. But does he find that he is being forced to buy one particular type of seed? GREG GUENTHER The decisions get harder every year because there are more choices, more things to choose from. Nobody forces the American producer to grow the genetically enhanced crops — we do it by choice because it has advantages to us as producers. The choices that we have in corn hybrids, soya bean varieties are tremendous. Each company may have as many as 50 or 60 different hybrids of corn, and more than that in choices in soya bean seed, genetically enhanced, modified if you will, or not. There are hundreds of choices from dozens of companies of both genetically enhanced crops and conventional corn and soya beans. NARRATOR Although Monsanto is the company that most people associate with GM food, there are in fact more than 20 other companies currently producing GM seeds, such as Advanta, Novartis, Dow, Pioneer, and Aventis. And the American Seed Trade Association lists almost 600 member companies offering farmers an enormous variety of non-GM seeds. GREG GUENTHER The fact that Monsanto has a product that is in high demand in US production agriculture is a credit to that company, by anticipating the needs of farmers and responding to those needs and desires. NARRATOR GM companies are often depicted as all-powerful giants. But Monsanto's turnover last year was less than a third that of Tesco. The work of scientists meanwhile is often depicted as having been compromised by association with these large corporations. DR JOHN GATEHOUSE In terms of trying to bring this technology on to the marketplace so that real people can use it — we can't do that ourselves as academic scientists, we don't have the resources that are necessary for example to do field trials which are needed for these crops, we can't produce crops on a large scale. It's only through collaboration with the industrial companies, the seed producers, that we can bring this technology on to the stage where it can be generally introduced. However, as you say, we are then caught in this double bind by collaborating with the industrial companies as we're encouraged to do. The public then seems to have this perception that we are no longer objective and that we are somehow in the industrial company's pocket. I just don't think this is true. I've seen no evidence of this. The industrial companies in fact value us because we are independent and objective. NARRATOR Whether we like it or not, today much scientific innovation comes out of large corporations. Multinational companies have given us everything from drugs to treat AIDs, to refrigerators and washing machines. Richard D North was formerly environmental correspondent on The Independent, but is now a critic of environmentalist arguments. RICHARD D NORTH GM technology has come out of multinationals. Actually it came out of small start-up companies that got funded and were then swallowed up by multinationals, great. Multinationals are law abiding, they're monitorable, they publish stuff, we know a lot about them, they honour their contracts, they're great reliable boring institutions about which we know a lot. Much more importantly than that, isn't it weird how people don't understand that they own the multinationals. But hold on — yes, it's our pension money that owns huge blocks of these firms that we suspect to be the enemy. And to demonise them is really weird, because they're about to pay our pensions for us. I mean, by extension it's very important to remember that say for the 1980s Reaganite economics, it was white-haired grannies down sized America, because the pension funds made the corporations kick arse. So when you see a corporation kick arse remember, it's not the corporation that's doing it for fun, it's because its owners, you and me, are saying 'sweat our capital for us baby , because we're going to retire to the sun on your money'. NARRATOR But campaigners against GM do not only oppose multinationals. Many of them are also generally opposed to modern forms of food production and distribution, and they say they wish to protect people in the Third World from making the same mistakes as we have. LADY CONRAN Do you have an organic goats' cheese? SHOP ASSISTANT No. LADY CONRAN Do you have an organic cheese? SHOP ASSISTANT No. LADY CONRAN No? BONNIE SOANES Are you having an organic turkey for Christmas? LADY CONRAN I am having an organic goose. And a capon I think. BONNIE SOANES Do you stuff the neck? LADY CONRAN Yes, yes. BONNIE SOANES You do, and use the gizzards? LADY CONRAN Yes yes yes. BONNIE SOANES It's fantastic. NARRATOR For anti-GM campaigners Lady Conran and Bonnie Soanes, their opposition to GM is part of a broader dislike of modern methods of food production and distribution, with its chemical pesticides, refrigerated lorries and impersonal supermarkets. BONNIE SOANES Well, this is what my children don't call shopping. LADY CONRAN Yes. BONNIE SOANES They won't call this shopping, when I do all this locally. They say "have you been to Tesco mum, have you been to Sainsburys?" And until they've been to a supermarket, they think that you know you're not being a decent mother. LADY CONRAN Yes. BONNIE SOANES You've abdicated your responsibilities. LADY CONRAN Are there are special things like they like? BONNIE SOANES Well they're just used to all the pre-packaged food that you get when you go round Tesco, and I'm trying to resist this as they're growing up. When a family are young you're just forced into that kind of lifestyle, and now they're getting older I'm trying to shop and cook locally and do much more of that. NARRATOR Modern food production and distribution has been immensely successful. According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, European farmers produce five times as much food today as they did only 40 years ago. It has reached a point where governments now pay farmers not to grow any more. Together with improved methods of packaging and transport, and the growth of international trade, this has given Western consumers access to an unprecedented volume and range of high quality fresh food, from all over the world. RICHARD D NORTH I do think it's fantastically funny to watch the food people — the foodies, the food programmes and all this —and their loathing of the supermarket and industrial food production and so on. I mean you walk into a supermarket, any supermarket, anywhere in the country and you have got the world's crop, the world's cuisine there. If you want to cook it for yourself you can; if you want somebody else to have cooked it for you even more cheaply, it's there. It's just absolutely amazing. What does it depend on? Huge refrigerated lorries that can really get things moved in huge quantity quickly, freshly. I mean it's just a most wonderful system. NARRATOR Another consequence of modern high yield farming is that although we in the first world grow more foods than ever before, we also use less land to do it, which makes more land available for things like wildlife and forests. For example, there are twice as many trees in Britain today as there were in the 1920s. Nevertheless many of GMs environmentalist critics are keen to return to pre-industrial farming methods. RENEE ELLIOT So I have a fundamental problem with whether it's GM or conventional farming, I think we have to go towards organic farming we have to go towards sustainable agriculture. So even if it is safe I still think it's the wrong way to go. HELEN BROWNING Yes, one of the reasons I became an organic farmer was because I could see that if we could get our own agriculture, our own problems sorted out, we might actually allow some of the developing countries to sort their problems out. We were providing an appalling model in the west of what agriculture should be. PROFESSOR CHANAPATNA PRAKASH Organic farming is not productive, organic farming is not very healthy, and you know you can drown Europe in 2 acres of cow shit and you're still not going to be able to get the kind of agricultural productivity that you have today. NARRATOR As for the notion that GM is necessary to improve food productivity in the Third World, many campaigners dismiss this as cynical propaganda from multinationals. RENEE ELLIOT One of the main arguments they're always saying is because there are people starving and the way farming is going now we won't be able to feed the world. But people not having food has nothing to do with the way food is grown, it's about distribution and it's about politics. There are grain mountains and butter mountains and milk mountains all over the place that people don't know about. It's not about growing food, and they use it in their argument to try and pull at our emotional strings and it's not true. PROFESSOR CHANAPATNA PRAKASH There's an irony in this argument that there's enough food in the world. I mean much of the food really is in developed countries of North America and Europe. And the very fact that we have so much food is because of the applications of science and technology in improving our farming systems and the very set of technologies that these greens are so opposed to. RENEE ELLIOT Nature is very clever, nature has given us the food that we need in a way that we need it, so why suddenly start changing it around? LADY CONRAN I mean it's been all right without GM foods for thousands of years hasn't it, so what's the rush? I don't understand it. RENEE ELLIOT What is the reason? The genetic companies will tell you it's about feeding the world — it's about creating more food, it's not about that. DR CYRUS NDIRITU I would like to make something very clear. It is not the multinationals that have a stronghold on Africa. It is hunger, poverty and deprivation. That is what has a stronghold on Africa. And if Africa is going to get out of that it has got to embrace modern technologies, including GM technology. HELEN BROWNING If you're going to take a risk with a new technology, then you've got to see a clear benefit, and at the moment there aren't clear benefits. There certainly aren't benefits in the developed world, and it seems even less likely that there will be any in the developing world in fact quite the opposite. It's going to make peasant farmers even more dependent on big inter-corporate structures, it's going to reduce still further the labour that's required and the building of soils which is the key necessary feature of agricultural systems there. So it's actually taking us further down the wrong road, if you want. I think that's the problem there. LADY CONRAN And the interesting thing is that the peasant farmers themselves know it and they don't particularly want it. RENEE ELLIOTT No they don't. NARRATOR This type of subsistence farming is widely practised in Kenya, and the rest of the Third World, and is often described as sustainable. But it can barely sustain Esther and John Kinuthia. When we met them they had not eaten for three days, and the first thing we did was to drive them to the nearest market to buy them food which they shared with the young son of a neighbour. Esther and John, like generations of African farmers before them, are organic farmers, but not out of choice. ESTHER KINUTHIA It is not that we don't appreciate the importance of using fertilisers and other chemicals, but poverty does not allow us to spend the little money we get on such things. With money I would certainly use fertilisers and other chemicals on my crops, because I know they give you healthier and better harvests. JOHN KIGNUTHIA Our diet is poor, you can see that there is nothing to live on here, we have no money, no jobs, no clothes, we dress in shreds. We survive on our prayers and by the grace of God. LUIS HERRERA-ESTRELLA Organic farming is a very old story. And many of the poor farmers practise organic farming not because they want, but because they have no option. But organic farming leads to very low productivity. And that implies that many children in the world cannot go to school because they have to stay on the farm and help their parents, because they have to go and pick weeds by hand, they have to eliminate insects by hand. So that's a major problem. PROFESSOR CHANAPATNA PRAKASH They say subsistence farming is sustainable: in a sense it is — it has sustained hunger, malnutrition and poverty for hundreds and hundreds of years. We don't want to sustain that, we want to get out of that. DR CYRUS NDIRITU I'm afraid it is one thing to romanticise Africa or to imagine that the developing countries should not do things that maybe the West feels it did wrong. But listen, it depends on whether you understand hunger or not, it depends on whether you know what it is to be deprived or not. And I think we owe it to our people, we owe it to the farmers of Africa to show them the way. It's nice to be romantic about not using chemicals, not using fertilisers, not using transgenic technology, it's nice to talk about those things. But just remember that for some people in the rural regions of Africa and maybe even Asia and Latin America, the choice is between life and death. NARRATOR It is an ordinary day in the hospital at Theka which is the nearest town to Esther and John Kinuthia and the doctors are struggling to deal with the appalling consequences of malnourishment. Kenya is relatively rich by African standards, and Theka is in one of the country's better off regions. But even here death from malnutrition is an everyday event. This baby girl died while we were filming. According the World Health Organisation, seven million children under five die every year, like this, from malnutrition. There are many reasons for famine in the Third World, including political corruption and civil war. But there is no civil war here. Officially there is no famine. But there are devastating agricultural problems, and the idea that farmers here should not use a technology which might address these problems quickly and effectively, angers many Third World scientists.. DR CARLOS BORROTTO I have spent a lot of time working on behalf of United Nations in Africa this year and I know what poverty is. I know what it is to see children dying from starvation and you could say to this person, 'Don't use the technology that can save your own children? No it's better that you're children die because you don't have food to provide them'. NARRATOR But the problem is not just the quantity of food in the Third World, it is also the quality. A few minutes away from the hospital in Theka there is a school for blind children. There are more than 250 blind children here, many of them victims of so-called hidden hunger, which results from a shortage of essential vitamins and proteins in their diet. For example, in the Third World 100 million children under 5 suffer vitamin A deficiency. And for many of them the results are devastating. PROFESSOR CHANAPATNA PRAKASH The deficiency of vitamin A is horrific. We have people, little children — nearly 1,500,000 of them — going blind every year because they don't get vitamin A in their diet. You know that with two carrots, a little bit of the greens in your diet every day you can get all the vitamin A that you want. But yet for nearly one or two billion people in this world, that is a tall order. NARRATOR Of the children in the Third World who go blind from vitamin A deficiency, half of them die within a year of losing their sight. Yet GM scientists have already shown that they are able to enhance considerably the vitamin content of rice, sweet potato and other foods which are widely consumed in the Third World. But for Dr Mae-Wan Ho modern agricultural techniques are not the answer to Third World problems like nutrition, but rather the cause. DR MAE-WAN HO: In Africa and other developing countries they have had very good nutrition, which is biodiverse, because they have a lot of agricultural biodiversity. They forage for food as well as growing a wide variety of food that provides them with all their nutritional needs. Unfortunately, mono-culture has displaced the agricultural biodiversity, so that's why their food is not as nutritious as it once was. The solution is to go back, reintroducing sustainable organic practices. NARRATOR Whatever the scientific disagreements about GM may be, there is also an ideological battle over the future direction of Third World agriculture. It is widely believed that GM will lead to a more commercialised type of farming in the Third World, with farmers growing so-called cash crops for export. And it is feared that this drift towards commercialism will undermine ancient cultures which many people are keen to preserve. But Mexican scientist Luis Herrera-Estrella believes there as a danger that middle class people in the affluent world are romanticising backward farming techniques and primitive ways of life in poor countries. LUIS HERRERA-ESTRELLA I think that they are not considering the people who live in developing countries. They want to keep nature, they want to keep people living the way they are, they want to have us like a museum in which they can come as tourists and see natural things, people living like 200 years ago, while they back at home have the luxury of all the technology, they have all the food and they have no need to suffer any problem. And they want to keep us living like that, and I think that's not fair and that's unjust. NARRATOR But how accurate is our perception of ancient cultures? These are not tribal subsistence farmers, they're professional dancers from Nairobi who speak perfect English and wear training shoes. Former environmental journalist Richard D North believes people in developing countries want and should be allowed to escape from subsistence farming and enter the modern world. RICHARD D NORTH There's a tranche of argument about GMs and it slots into a huge new burgeoning argument about world trade or free trade. All kinds of people are saying 'let there be self sufficiency'. And in the version that that applies to, say, Africa it's 'let there be peasants in Africa and affluent people, but the peasant in Africa is going to be self sufficient.' Now the trouble is that subsistence agriculture doesn't work, it's too much like hard work, people don't like it, I've talked to the people who don't like it, it hurts their backs too much, it's too boring, it's too uncertain. They hate it, they want something a bit more commercial. They want frankly to be in world trade. They want to sell carnations to Harrods they want to sell mange tout to Tesco. Why? Because we've got money and we give it to them quickly, they grow a crop they get the money, they like having money, with money you can buy food they don't want to grow everything. Even if they could grow everything they can't grow a digestive biscuit. A small farmer can't grow chicken and lamb, he can only grow perhaps chicken. They want the variety that cash brings. There's a trendy argument, it's a really common argument, that somehow out there there are millions of black people who don't want money in their pocket, they want dirt under their nails, and to be working getting back ache in the sunset with a backhoe. Now I haven't met that person. I've met people who want an income from farming. And they look at us and they say tell us how you do it. NARRATOR But for some, the intensive agriculture carries the risk of destroying the spiritual relationship between farmer and land. DR MAE-WAN HO Organic farmers are artists and poets. They have a certain relationship with their land. I have farmers in India saying that we have placental connections with the earth. And the trees are poems that the earth writes and to the sky. They have a love affair with their land. Peruvian farmers adopt plants into their gardens as family members, and every year they have a ceremony in which the old potato hands over to the new seed potatoes, the responsibility of breeding human beings. What intensive agriculture does is to mechanise the whole thing, they convert these poets into tractor drivers. NARRATOR At Kenya's Agricultural Research Institute, scientists are adapting Western technology to address the specific needs of African farmers. Dr John Wafula and his colleagues do not share the attachment some Westerners have to traditional, subsistence farming methods. His overriding concern is to find ways of helping Kenyan farmers grow more food. DR JOHN WAFULA I don't think it is up to the anti-biotechnology to tell for example Kenyans whether biotechnology is relevant to Kenyans or not. It's up to Kenyans themselves to look at the technology, understand it and identify how relevant it is to the country. We are faced here with really life-threatening food shortage issues. Millions of people are dying, millions of people are starving, millions of children go around their life without food. The availability - enhancing availability — for food is a critical thing in Africa, and therefore if biotechnology offers that opportunity to enhance production I believe that we should go for it. NARRATOR Over the past 40 years, more and more Kenyan farmers have benefited from using hybrid seeds, pesticides, inorganic fertilisers and so on, and as a result, over that period, food production in Kenya has been increasing by around 3% a year. But to feed Kenya's growing population, scientists at KARI believe the adoption of GM is vital. The question is, will the consumer backlash in the West, prevent them from doing so? What started as a food scare in Western Europe is striking fear into the hearts of the world's biggest food companies. Environmentalists have been joined by influential consumer groups and other lobbying organisations, with disastrous consequences for the biotech companies that produce GM. At Deutsche Bank in New York analyst Tim Ramey has been following the effects of this extraordinary campaign. TIM RAMEY The difficult thing that I found was that I'm a believer in this technology from a science perspective. I think the world is a better place with genetically modified foods, and yet I just didn't feel that they would be accepted by food companies given the controversy that was developing. Really, my genetically modified epiphany if you will, came when a woman from one of the large package food companies stood up and said 'You know, you really don't expect my company to take the bullet for GM foods do you?' That to me was very powerful. It said the food companies don't really care whether these products work or don't work, all they care about is how they are perceived in the marketplace and rightly so: they are not going to formulate with GM products because they don't want a third of the population coming back and screaming at them. NARRATOR By far the most effective weapon in the campaign against GM has been consumer choice. And the most powerful argument of all has been the demand for labelling. MONA PATEL The Consumers' Association has been campaigning for choice in relation to genetically modified food. We very much believe that consumers should have the choice about whether or not they want to eat GM food, and if they don't want to eat it everything should be properly labelled in order to enable them to make that choice. RICHARD D NORTH What slays me about the cry for labelling is that it seems to me so manipulative, it seems to me so mealy mouthed. There's an agenda behind it, I do believe. It is that the people who want to stop GMO dead in its tracks know that labelling sounds completely reasonable and would completely kill the business. Why, because if you say this is GM, and you say it now, and you say it in the current climate, and you say it when you as campaigners know that you have got nearly every voice in the country on your side when you're trashing that, when you make somebody say this is GMO you are making them say 'this is Frankenstein food, watch out, leave it alone, don't touch it.' TIM RAMEY Labelling is one of those issues where it's like mother and apple pie. Who could argue against it, it seems like the only informed thing to do. And yet if I think about the prospects for Coca Cola, for instance, putting 'made from genetically modified corn' on their label, I don't think that's ever going to happen. So once you require labelling or labelling is the de facto standard, essentially you've killed GM products in the market place. NARRATOR Many of the world's biggest food producers and retailers will now not sell produce grown from GM seeds. Firms like Unilever, Nestle, Sainsbury's, Iceland, Tesco, Marks & Spencer's, McDonald's, Domino Pizza, KFC, Burger King, and so on, the list of those turning against GM is almost endless. The Local Government Association is even calling for meals on wheels to be GM free. And this corporate rejection of GM has had an immediate impact on farmers. Greg Guenther is one of the many who will not be growing GM this year. GREG GUENTHER Farmers know that there's nothing wrong with the genetically modified technology. It's wonderful technology — I keep saying that it's marvellous, it's great, it's a huge leap forward in food production and in the possibility of improving everyone's lot on the planet. But if you don't have a market for what you grow, you don't get a second chance. The thought alone that by planting a genetically modified crop, you could be either faced with a lack of a market or a discounted market is truly frightening. And that's all the disincentive that I need to shy away from the technology. So I'm taking the steps that I need to take to make sure that what I grow is saleable, no matter what happens with the GM debate. NARRATOR By the middle of last year Deustche Bank analyst Tim Ramey was so pessimistic about the future of GM food that he released a report on Wall Street called GMOs Are Dead. TIM RAMEY When we published our report in May we really felt that the issue would be very controversial and would swing from a solidly positive perception of GMOs on Wall Street to a very negative one very quickly and that would impact share prices. So we advised investors to begin selling the shares of anything related to genetically modified foods. NARRATOR Deutsche Bank's call to sell had an immediate impact in the financial markets, as the share prices of biotech companies plummeted. Within a matter of weeks the market value of Monsanto almost halved, from $60 to $33. And although Monsanto's shares have since recovered, many others have not. The shares of GM firm Agribiotech fell a staggering 70%, and, in January 2000, the company was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. DR JOHN GATEHOUSE A lot of people who were employed working for various companies on plant biotechnology and genetic engineering projects have lost their jobs over the last year. And at least one company has gone under. One small biotechnology company went bankrupt because they needed refinancing at the time when this was topical, and they were unable to raise the funding they needed in the City because people were scared to invest. NARRATOR Luis Herrera-Estrella, the Mexican scientist currently developing plants which will grow more successfully in the poor soils found in the Third World, now doubts whether his work will ever see the light of day. LUIS HERRERA-ESTRELLA This controversy of GM technology is having major effects on many aspects of our research. It's been affecting funding, several agencies are now hesitating to fund GM research, we will be delayed in getting the permits to field-test our plants, and we may not be allowed to commercialise them and to provide them to the small farmers. BONNIE SOANES I think you can have the criticism of us — of women say no — by saying 'You're in a privileged powerful position in society with a great deal of comfort around you, how do you understand the needs and wants and desires of people who are less well off in other countries?' But the whole thing about the anti-GM movement is that it has united people from all walks of life, from all corners of the globe. NARRATOR Nevertheless, it is affluent European consumers who may ultimately prevent farmers in poor countries from adopting the new GM technology, since to do so would effectively exclude them from selling their produce abroad. RENEE ELLIOTT I think that anybody who is growing any crop needs to think about where their market is. And in that instance I would say that you need to make sure that your market is comfortable with the kind of technologies — the kind of way you're doing things. I mean there are huge opportunities which are being taken up largely by the developing countries as well as others to grow organic crops, and GM-free crops that are entering into the European market and are in great demand. MONA PATEL If genetically modified food which is produced in the developed world is dumped in developing countries, then farmers who are currently farming in the Third World will have no market for their produce and their livelihoods are going to go down. NARRATOR The consequences of the Western consumer backlash are already being felt in Cuba, where the fields which have been set aside for testing GM lie fallow. Despite having invested heavily in this new technology, the Cubans now feel constrained from using it. DR CARLOS BORROTO Cuba has a great expertise with GMO foods, but we don't have one single plant in production that has been modified using this technology. And why? It is because of this campaign. Who will buy our products, who will buy our sugar if we produce sugar with sugar cane modified genetically? And the sad thing is that there is not one piece of evidence that this technology has any problems. DR CYRUS NDIRITU The consumer backlash in Europe has a major impact on what will happen in the developing countries over the next few years. Because basically what the Western consumers are saying is, that if you manipulate your plants, even if it is safe, we'll not take it, we'll not buy it. And obviously the developing world governments will probably even want to suppress genetic modification technologies. Not because they believe it's bad, but because in the shorter term they are frightened that they can't sell what they're producing. DR CARLOS BORROTO You have a scientific tool to help in this battle for food security, and you will say stop it, you will say not use it. You will condemn this person to die. ROGER BEECHY There is a real concern and in fact a likelihood that the anti-technology campaign currently going on in the US and in Europe will have such an influence in developing countries that they will not adopt the technology. Without adopting the new technology for crop production we will face massive starvation in the next 50 years. NARRATOR For Guardian journalist Julian Borger, the success of the anti-GM campaign represents a victory for democracy and the consumer. JULIAN BORGER I think it's shown that there are limits to the power of corporations and those limits are set by consumers in the same way that voters set limits for governments in democratic societies. So in a way, what we've seen is the democratisation of the new economies — the new technology-driven economies — with people cutting them down to size, down to a size that they can understand, and down to a pace that they want to move at. NARRATOR For scientists like Derek Burke, however, it represents a victory for ignorance and superstition. PROFESSOR DEREK BURKE Our lives have been revolutionised over the last 200 years. My grandparents were working class and lived very modestly. I've lived very well and most of that has been brought about by the new wealth that science and technology has created and which we've been able to harness for the good of us all. And so the reasonable use of science and technology with reasonable restraints has been of immense value to all our societies. I'm now beginning to wonder if we're turning away from that, if we're becoming rather decadent in our affluent old age, where we think we don't need new knowledge, where we can afford to indulge our prejudices. And I think anti-GM is such a prejudice. RICHARD D NORTH For centuries we have discussed things with as much application of intelligence, understanding, rationality, evidence, carefulness. We applied those things, and it was a triumph of civilisation. The resulting civilisation was good, the processes by which it worked were great. Now we're drifting cheerfully, brainlessly, thoughtlessly into a world in which whoever is loud, hysterical, can manipulate the evidence best, grab a bit of attention, they win. Now that's a tragedy. NARRATOR There was a bitter sweetness in the ceremony in Havana, in which the Cubans honoured Baron Professor Marc Van Montagu, the father of genetically modified food. For Van Montagu the campaign which has denied the Cubans the benefit of his work, represents an almost medieval attack on rationalism and freedom. PROFESSOR MARC VAN MONTAGU This prohibition of GM food is extremely dangerous because it's censorship that is not based on science. And if you really block scientific curiosity, that is the basis of our progress. What we have realised in society was because scientists were able to enquire and then come up with solutions for all the problems we have. And if that is no longer allowed, if people can start forbidding things without explanations, without rational arguments, we are absolutely back in inquisition. |
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