Cookery writer opposes more genetic crops trials

The best-selling cookery writer and broadcaster Ms Darina Allen has strongly criticised moves to expand trials on growing genetically modified crops.

The trials were being pursued with too much speed and undue secrecy, she said yesterday. The repercussions of "fiddling around with genes" in the food chain have not been sufficiently researched, she claimed.

Plans by the US biotechnology company Monsanto to increase its trial sites from one last year to 10 in 1998, all at different locations, is not in the interests of consumers and most especially the food industry, Ms Allen said yesterday.

She acknowledged her particular concern that one of the trials is proposed for Shanagarry, at a location, which has yet to be made public, probably less than a couple of miles from her internationally famous Ballymaloe cookery school. She carries on organic farming in the area.

Ms Allen, who is on the board of the new Food Safety Authority of Ireland, told The Irish Times her stance was not a "not at my back door" one. She had always objected to genetically modified food production from the perspective of a consumer and mother.

She felt it was in the public interest that "the cloak of secrecy be lifted over where the trials are to be located", notwithstanding the US company's concern that such sites may be sabotaged, as was Monsanto's only 1997 trial site in Carlow.

She added: "I'm terribly worried about the speed that this happening. Not enough is known about the whole process and the repercussions of fiddling around with genes, especially the impact on the food chain."

Genetically modified soya bean and maize from the US was introduced to Europe without proper announcements and deplorably inadequate labelling arrangements, she added. "Picking up a packet or tin of soya, we don't know exactly what is in it. As consumers we have a right to know."

Rendering beet resistant to Round-Up weedkiller produced by Monsanto was tying farmers into buying Round-Up and, in her view, a worrying trend. Moreover, she said, a lot of seed companies were being bought by chemical companies. It was a very sinister development on the basis that "food and food quality are in the grip of a smaller and smaller number of people who have huge vested interests".

Ballymaloe was involved in rearing pigs and Kerry cows in an effort to make the meat from them special, from organic-like conditions, but it was proving difficult to get the right feed for them. Because it had become impossible to separate genetically engineered soya from non-modified soya, they could no longer be fed soya feed. "The next thing to go will be maize. I'm finding it more and more difficult to get feed to satisfy our animals."

The future of the food industry was "in keeping our country as clean and green as possible", she said. The case for the pure and natural path was overwhelming; likewise for less intensive farming and more organic production.

Ms Allen stressed she was nonetheless a realist and accepted the need for large-scale food manufacture. Yet many were questioning the role that genetic modification of food was playing in that broader picture. "We are pushing animals and plants beyond their natural limit. You cannot mess with nature and expect to get away with it indefinitely."