Reuters | November 17, 1999 | By Patricia Reaney
LONDON - A British scientist said Wednesday that genetic modification technology is not a big, bad monster sponsored by profit-hungry multinationals, but a scientific means to efficiently feed a hungry world.
Anthony Trewavas, a plant biologist at the Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, said the furor over such technology that has gripped Britain is not based on well substantiated facts about plants and farming.
"Attempts to introduce genetically modified (GM) foods have stimulated, not a reasoned debate, but a potent negative campaign by people with other agendas who demonize the technology," Trewavas said in a commentary in the science journal Nature.
"Almost without exception, opponents of GM foods are not plants biologists."
He argued against claims that GM plants would lead to the creation of superweeds, that they would kill unsuspecting insects, harm people and spread altered genes to other plants.
Alien plant species introduced into Britain and excessive use of pesticides are more likely to create indestructible weeds than GM crops, he said.
"On average, conventional farming uses five or more broad-spectrum pesticide applications on crops each year. The technology is ultimately self-limiting because pest resistance rapidly emerges, much as overprescription of antibiotics by the medical profession is hastening the end of useful drugs," he said.
GM plants are also unlikely to contaminate other crops because individual seeds cannot be spread by birds over long distances and transgenic crop seeds have low fitness and poor survival possibilities.
On the health safety issue, Trewavas said that almost all of the carcinogens consumed by people are made naturally by plants to protect themselves against predators.
But for Trewavas the argument that nations would be able to grow enough food to feed a growing world population without resorting to GM technology is the weakest.
"The future is threatened by global warming and unpredictable climate change. The old enemies of locust, floods, disease, drought and pest still exists. In the face of these adversaries, diversity in technology becomes a strength and a necessity, not a luxury," he said.
Genetic manipulative has a unique and intimate role to play in modern agriculture and should be tried and tested and not dismissed, Trewavas added.
Copyright 1999 Reuters Ltd. All rights reserved.
