From our point of view GM Foods have certainly not
fulfilled any of the promises they have made in the past
and they have evolved over the last 20 years into being a very bad force.
GM foods really mean foods that come from GM crops
and GM crops are ordinary crops
which have been changed using genetic engineering.
That is a method that has come about because of the discovery of DNA.
You could take genes from a certain fish which is very red
and insert it into the tomato plant to make tomatoes redder.
It's not like conventional breeding
because it is cross species and is done very quickly in a lab.
You can look at it as a more precise way of engineering a change.
The initial promises of GM 20 years ago,
were the same ones in fact that they are making now
that GM technology would feed the world,
that it would give nutrition in developing countries
and it would stop farmers from being in poverty.
The main effects have been to improve
the protection of crops against yield loss.
When you look at the crops up to now,
they're producing a lot more per unit land.
The best and biggest assessment that we've had so far
of global agriculture, science and technology,
done by the UN and 300 scientists over the last three years
has come out in April saying,
GM crops don't necessarily give higher yields.
Secondly, reduce the amount of chemicals we need to spray.
One recent report shows that the use of GM crops
has reduced pesticide use by nearly 300 million kilograms so far.
In Brazil, government data has shown
there has been an 80% increase in pesticide use.
Because crops have developed resistance
they have to use more herbicides and pesticides.
One example of a crop they are already working on
to produce Omega 3 oils that normally we get from fish,
we can actually put those healthy oils into crops.
But, not getting them from fish, we get it from plants the fish eat.
That means that rather than having to harvest a lot of fish,
we'll be able to produce this very healthy oil in our oil seed crops.
We're achieving improvements in drought tolerance for crops.
We'll be able to grow crops in very threatened areas
like Darfur or any of the Saharan areas.
All the claims of higher yields, drought resistance, salt tolerance,
they only exist in the PR of biotech companies.
None of them exist. They are not needed.
In a country like India,
there are 6,000, more than 6,000, probably 60, wild varieties of rice.
A lot of these adapted to local conditions.
If you go into a place like that and release a GM crop,
we'll reduce the gene pool down to one or two crops.
If they are then hit by a drought, we've lost the whole lot.
Because GM is such a new technology,
there are virtually no or very few,
long-term health impact studies on their effects on humans.
I would not eat GM produce.
I would have no problem about eating any products
that have gone through today's regulatory system.
The methods we use to check safety,
would actually fail many of the crops we've used for hundreds of years.
A potato, which was not originally in our diet,
contains some harmful chemicals
and in their wild form, are extremely toxic.
The other issue is, of course, our much bigger environmental issues,
which is that GM plants,
once out in the environment, they contaminate natural plants.
With forensic science's use of DNA fingerprinting,
you can detect extremely small amounts.
So, what is important is to keep the levels of that mixture
down to a small level that allows people the choice.
But, to try to eliminate the minimum amount detectable
would be an unachievable objective.