Minister brands GM protesters
wicked over hi-tech resistance

Owen Paterson condemned activists opposing GM technology for “casting a dark shadow over attempts to feed the world”, and endorsed calls for an urgent roll-out of vitamin A-enhanced rice to cut Third World child deaths.

In an interview with the Independent, the Conservative MP said: “It’s just disgusting that little children are allowed to go blind and die because of a hang-up by a small number of people about this technology. I feel really strongly about it. I think what they do is absolutely wicked.”

Golden rice has been developed with charitable funding from the Rockefeller Foundation. Scientists believe it could help prevent around 670,000 child deaths a year and save another 350,000 from going blind as a result of vitamin A deficiency, but a crop was destroyed by 400 protesters in the Philippines in August, weeks before it could be submitted for a safety evaluation.

Mr Paterson insisted questions over the safety of GM food were not founded on evidence.

“There are 17 million farmers farming 170m hectares, which is 12 per cent of the world’s arable area, seven times the surface area of the UK (with GM) and no one has ever brought me a single case of a health problem,” he said.

“That cannot be said for other forms of farming.

“When you think that golden rice has been developed by philanthropists and could have a dramatic impact on children who are going blind from vitamin A deficiency or dying from vitamin A deficiency it is absolutely wicked that these environmental groups oppose it. There is no other word for it.”

A trial of GM potato crops by a team at the University of Leeds, granted in 2008, resulted in 400 plants being destroyed by vandals and the research was abandoned. The trial was designed to determine whether a major pest of potatoes could be controlled safely without a pesticide.

Professor Howard Atkinson, of the Centre for Plant Sciences at the University, said: “Clearly I think it’s unacceptable that activists should destroy field trials because we need the data.

“If activists won’t let trials go ahead, we can’t figure out if their arguments have any value.

“If we can’t collect the data then government can’t evaluate what should and what shouldn’t be allowed.”

The only GM field trial being carried out in the UK is by Rothamsted Research in Herefordshire. Defra extended its trial of GM wheat, aimed at testing its success of repelling aphids, this summer to include autumn-sown cadenza wheat.

Prof Atkinson said GM cotton growers in India and China had benefited in terms of yields, income and reduced exposure to pesticides, and that clothes made using GM cotton were worn by people in the UK. Confidence in GM food is more complicated, he said.

“There’s concern among consumers because of past problems that have nothing to do with GM, like mad cow disease, and another issue is people know that things they do are risky – driving a car or smoking a cigarette – but they can make that judgment for themselves, but there is this feeling that with food stuff, that decision has been taken from them.

“There is much more risk in everyday food stuff. With GM food it would be safer because it would be so extensively regulated.”

GM crops were not a panacea for world hunger, he said, but they would be “a useful tool in the box”. “If we don’t make people food secure we will have all sorts of other problems. The case continues to have to be made.”