Expert's warning on `vilification' of GM foods

The potential benefits of genetically modified foods are being put at risk by "a successful campaign of vilification", according to a senior biotechnology researcher.

This was being orchestrated in part by sections of the organic farming community, according to Prof Peter Whittaker, head of the biology department at NUI Maynooth. They were being "aided and abetted by Prince Charles, Paul McCartney and the mass media", he added.

Prof Whittaker was speaking earlier this week at the annual library lecture at Maynooth. Developments in biology were opening up the new world of biotechnology, he said, "a world that offers the possibility to eliminate sickness and disease and to establish a new harmony with our environment". While the technology presented us with remarkable challenges and opportunities, it also raised important moral and ethical questions, the answers to which were by no means clear-cut.

Despite certain GM foods being approved by the US FDA and the Irish Food Safety Authority, the public were fearful "in the face of statements from misinformed commentators, scare-mongering newspaper headlines and the removal of GM products from supermarket shelves".

"Because of the unwarranted adverse publicity, there is a real possibility that development of the technology will be seriously delayed. I believe that such a delay could have very unfortunate consequences," he said.

Countries with a "precarious food situation" could benefit. "The answer cannot be the movement of food from areas of overproduction to areas of underproduction because humanitarian aid on this scale rarely reaches those in real need." Rather, it was necessary to provide crops which could be grown successfully where the ground was otherwise too arid or too infertile.