Growing GM crops will help us feed world, says minister

 
20 June 2013
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Britain has a “duty” to explore growing genetically modified crops to feed the world, Environment Secretary Owen Paterson said today.

In a major push for the use of the controversial technology in the UK, the Right-wing Cabinet minister argued it could improve the environment while also saving lives.

Environmental campaigners rejected his claims, calling GM crops the “cuckoo in the nest” which threatened to destroy other farming practices.

But Mr Paterson’s defence of GM signalled a fresh Government drive to introduce them in Britain.

“It is our duty to explore technologies like GM because they may hold the answers to the very serious challenges ahead,” he said in a keynote speech in Harpenden in Hertfordshire.

“I want the UK to have a leading role in feeding the world.”

The intense scrutiny of GM crops mean they would actually be safer foods than those produced using conventional means, he argued.

The Environment Secretary said an area seven times the size of the UK was already being used for the cultivation of GM crops worldwide and that the European Commission’s chief scientist Anne Glover had concluded that “there’s no substantiated case of any adverse impact” on health. He added: “The next generation of GM offers the most wonderful opportunities to improve human health.”

He highlighted “golden rice”, which is fortified with vitamin A to combat blindness and has the potential to save lives, particularly in South-East Asia, saying: “Every attempt to deploy this golden rice has been thwarted and in that time seven million children have gone blind or died.”

The European Union has been deadlocked on GM for years, with only two crops given the green light for commercial growing, but Mr Paterson wants countries that aspire to use the technology to be allowed to do so.

However, opponents of GM methods say it contributes to intensive farming practices and pesticide use that are environmentally damaging.

Peter Melchett, policy director of organic campaign group the Soil Association, said: “GM is the cuckoo in the nest. It drives out and destroys the systems that international scientists agree we need to feed the world.”

Friends of the Earth’s head of policy, research and science Mike Childs added: “Ministers must urgently get behind a different approach to food and farming that delivers real sustainable solutions rather than peddling the snake oil that is GM.”

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