Last chance to turn the tide of GM food

People should be aware that the Government is ignoring public opinion with its GM-friendly stance.

One so-called impartial official in the crop trials believed "the benefits of GM outweigh the risks" - not so impartial, then.

In Scotland and Wales, the Government is proceeding with the licensing of commercial use of GM crops even before the results of crop trials are known.

While the organic food market is growing fast, partly because people want to avoid GM food, there is no market demand for GM food in the UK.

Yet if the commercial planting of GM goes ahead, cross-pollination will undoubtedly occur and ruin many organic crops.

GM contamination largely destroyed the organic oilseed rape sector in Saskatchewan, Canada. A local farmer, Arnold Taylor, said: "Be under no illusion, GM contaminates the farming system."

Nor do we know the long-term effects of GM food. Virus genes, used to insert the new gene into a plant and activate it, can move out again and the implications of gene transfer for our health and the environment have not been properly studied.

GM companies such as Monsanto say GM crops mean less pesticide use but data from the US reveals that GM maize was treated with 30 per cent more herbicide than non-GM maize.

GM companies also say GM is about feeding the world but a US farmer, Rodney Nelson, says after personal experience of Monsanto and its products: "GM crops have nothing to do with feeding the world. This is all about patents and the money patents can make. And if the UK government decides to proceed with commercial growing, God help you."

If you, like me, suspect GM production has risks that outweigh any possible benefit, protest to your MP and let your views be known to your supermarket because if commercial planting proceeds it may become impossible to grow any non-GM crops in this country, with dire consequences for our health and the environment.

-M Winter, Westdene, Brighton