From: Charlie Stross (charlie@antipope.org)
Date: Tue Jun 08 1999 - 10:08:52 MDT
On Mon, Jun 07, 1999 at 12:48:33PM -0700, Gina Miller wrote:
>
> British Farmer Destroys Genetically Modified Crop
> By John Morrison
>
> LONDON (Reuters) - British campaigners against genetically modified (GM)
> crops claimed victory Monday after a farmer bowed to local opposition and
> destroyed his trial crop of GM oilseed rape with weedkiller.
>
> The environmentalist Green Party, hoping that consumer worries about food
> safety would help it win its first seats in the European Parliament, called
> Monday for a total ban on field trials of modified oilseed rape and maize.
This isn't just the Green party. Food scares have become a staple part
of the British media diet in recent years, and for good reason: consider
the BSE crisis as an example of how major problems are covered up, then
bear in mind that something like 80% of the food sold in the UK is
sold through five supermarket chains.
The anti-GM backlash isn't rational, but it's an understandable outcome
of a situation where lots of people have been lied to -- with potentially
fatal consequences -- and the media has noticed that bad news about food
sells copy. The politicians are already shifting gear from making soothing
noises about committees of enquiry to hedging about moratoria: they've seen
which way the wind is blowing.
I'm coming to fear that the prospects for GM food in the UK resemble
those for neighbourhood nuclear fission reactors in the USA: it's going
to turn into the next big taboo subject.
-- Charlie
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:04:03 MST