Study questions GM cost benefits
A Government report on genetically modified crops has suggested that there would be little economic benefit in their adoption.
The report was undertaken by the Cabinet Office Strategy Unit to investigate the effect of the technology on various stages of food production, and the consumer, as well as on organic farmers, the biotech industry and the environment.
One of the most important pressures to permit the use of GM crops has been the promise of improved yields at lower costs for farmers, which would in turn mean less expensive food for consumers. However, this report has suggested that other costs reduce this benefit.
Most notable among the other costs is the need to separate GM and non-GM crops. The practice of ensuring that GM crops are grown a significant distant from other crops is to avoid contamination through cross-pollination, which is particularly important to organic farmers.
While the costs of this separation may reduce economic benefits, and the level of cross-pollination, the industry body for organic farming, the Soil Association, is arguing that any cross pollination is too much, and will undermine their industry.
Cross pollination is also an issue for the environment, with severe concerns that interbreeding between crops and wild plants would alter the natural balance, and lead to the development of ‘super weeds’ which, like the crops, are immune to herbicides, and will thus require the development of new chemicals.
The report has also stated that demand for GM products appears to be low, and that they will therefore not prove commercially viable for large-scale farming. But the report has not drawn an absolute conclusion, and will leave the door open for the Government to consider the results of two other reports expected this year.
One of these will be based on the results of ongoing crop trials, which green groups have attempted to sabotage by pulling up crops from fields believed to be growing them.
The other report will result from the innovative public consultation on the subject, which has tried to open a public debate.
Events across the country have invited the public to meet other people with opinions on the subject so as to discuss their views, though campaigners fear that the government has already made up its mind.
Responding to today’s report, the Environment Minister Elliot Morley said he concurred with its conclusions on the likely economic implications of GM crops in the short-term.
However, Mr Morley insisted on the ‘substantial potential benefits’ that he claimed to be offered by GM technology.
‘I don’t disagree with it’s conclusions that, at the present time, because of the range of crops available, which are really more designed for North America prairie farming rather than UK and Europe, and also consumer resistance, which you can’t ignore, there’s probably not much of a market for them at the present time’, he told BBC Radio Four’s ‘The World At One’.
‘But they also were pointing to the fact that GM developments in the future may not just be food crops, it may be commercial industrial crops, pharmaceuticals, bio-oils – all sort of different things that we shouldn’t close the door to’.
Mr Morley emphasised that there was ‘no chance’ of a particular GM technology winning authorisation if there was a proven risk to human health or the environment.
‘That’s why every single GM development has to go through an individual assessment. You can’t have blanket approvals on these kinds of products, you must look at them individually and that has got to be the priority’.
And he added: ‘It’s got to be the priority for consumer choice, the choice for people, growers, manufacturers not to use GM if they don’t want to, and we must have the procedures in place to do that’.
For its part, environmental campaign group Friends of the Earth (FoE) insists that the UK public does not wish to see the rolling out of GM food techology.
FoE director Tony Juniper said that public opinion fell firmly behind developing organic food and farming, improving animal welfare standards and preserving the countryside.
‘I think the Government, which is pro-GM, is trying to sweeten the message by saying that they might be longer-term benefits, but we would say that they shouldn’t be trying to solve all the problems of British agriculture through bio-technology’.
Insisting that FoE was not against new technology per se, he said: ‘We do believe that there are very powerful potential ways in which science can be used for environmental benefits, but this is not the right way now.
‘We need to demonstrate real needs that are going to be met by the promotion of GM crops, and that case has simply not been made’.
