GM-free Scotland

News | August '08 | Let's take the GM-free high road

An image of mixed vegetablesEngraved on our sceptre, the ever-present symbol of sovereignty in the Scottish parliament at Holyrood, are Scotland's tenets: compassion, integrity, justice and wisdom.

Let's hope these sentiments are applied, above all, to our food: compassion to livestock and to the environment, integrity at all stages of production, justice for farmers, and wisdom from farm to fork. That way, we will have life-enhancing food, and with it health, wealth and happiness.

Scotland has got off to a good start. While the government at Westminster dithers over GM crops and evades the question by insisting it “should make its decisions based on objective scientific evidence” (Ann McKechin, MP), the Scottish Parliament has stated and re-stated its position on GM food and crops: “We don't know enough about the risks. Scotland's reputation is based on having a clean and clear environment. This reputation would be sullied if GM were grown here.” (Michael Russell, Scottish environment minister); “We would be very concerned about (reconsideration of GM crops). Scotland has an international reputation second to none in terms of the quality of our environment and trust in the quality of our foodstuffs. These could be jeopardised by GM.” (spokesman for First Minister Alex Salmond). Scotland's leaders have also supported the EU Environment Commissioner in blocking three applications earlier this year to approve the cultivation of GM maize.

Moreover, after an extensive national consultation on all aspects of our food, diet, food economy, health, education and access, Scotland has produced the first National Policy for Food and Drink. This aims to boost the industry, support healthier and more environmentally sustainable choices and enhance Scotland's reputation as a land of food and drink. Several practical measures were announced to further this policy, including improving the quality of food in restaurants and pubs, cooking skills for schools, parents and community groups, trustworthy labelling, formation of a world-class health and nutrition centre, and leading by example in choosing fresh seasonal foods. You can find out more on the Scottish Government website.  

Scotland hasn't, of course, escaped the latest pro-GM disinformation campaign as the biotech industry spin doctors ride on the back of the current fuel and food crisis (see SPLURGE OF SPIN – News, August 2008) and.

One Scottish MEP has been happy to join in the GM-feed-is-the-answer-to-rising-prices brigade, and seems to have found the time in between running Europe to write regular articles on the subject for the newspapers.

One of our 'top' agricultural scientists has warned that the country will pay a heavy price if it turns its back on genetically modified crops. That this warning springs from biotech industry PR machinations is evident if you look at the content of the article. We aren't given any science by this professor of science. We're given all the usual irrelevant biotech propaganda: the global worth of current GM crops, the global area of current GM crops, the number of farmers growing GM crops world-wide (but, percentages of the total are not given as these would tell a different story). The article goes on to the inevitable blame game, pseudo-science and attempts to sow the seed of resignation to an inevitable fate: we are misinformed, GM has been grown for years without “safety issues”, traditional breeding has safety issues too, and anyway Scotland will have to accept GM in the end.

But, just in case you're feeling overwhelmed by the scale of the global plot to force GM down our throats, with Scotland an ant on the path of the GM juggernaut and about to be trodden out of existence, take heart in the fact that 'small' is demonstrably 'bountiful' especially in farming.

George Monbiot describes this “unexpected discovery ... first made in 1962 ... and since confirmed by dozens of further studies.” graphically: “There is an inverse relationship between the size of farms and the amount of crops they produce per hectare. The smaller they are, the greater the yield. In some cases the difference is enormous. A recent study of farming in Turkey, for example, found that farms of less than one hectare are twenty times as productive as farms of over ten hectares” This observation has been tested in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Malaysia, Thailand, Java, the Philippines, Columbia and Paraguay.

This disproves modern dogma which holds that mechanised, capital-intensive, high-tech farming give economy of scale. In truth, the smaller the farm, the more diversification and intensification are possible, and the more closely the crop varieties and methods used can be individualised to suit the character of the patch of ground.

These would sit very well into the scheme of our New Policy for Food and Drink.

OUR COMMENT

The professor's story is a breathtaking concoction of menace (the attention-grabber), popular psychology (the kind that 'explains' your fears to you), pseudo science (the kind that doesn't actually measure or compare anything), and opinion dressed up as fact. Truly unworthy of a science professor.

Anyone who's been following the biotech industry road-show over the years will know to dismiss articles like this, and our MSPs clearly don't agree with it, however this particular Scottish professor has just been awarded part of a £400,000 fund to develop new techniques to track the side effects of GM. With a scientist as biased as this on the case, prepared to mis-use statistics and to take biotech industry dictation, GM crops never will have any “safety issues”.

You might think about a word in the ear of those responsible for our food, agriculture and environment: tell them if they really want to explore GM side effects, they might do well to employ someone less obsessed with the profits and what's happening elsewhere in the world, and more concerned with the science. They could even think about bringing back into the picture another Scottish scientist who is expert in food safety testing, Dr. Arpad Pusztai.: perhaps our new Scottish Parliament will be more open to his findings on GM, the ones Westminster and its biotech buddies didn't want to know.

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