Madam, - There may be good arguments against growing GM foods, but your correspondents Honor Moore, president, and Nuala Cullen, chairperson of the Irish Food Writers' Guild ( July 2nd) do not present them.
They rely instead on three points of dubious merit: first, someone is making money; second, cross-pollination will occur; third, scientists have misled us before. They slip in a warning that GM foods will be less tasty; on that point, the market will decide.
The fact that supermarkets and GM companies will profit is true but irrelevant. People also make profits in the building, transport, and entertainment industries; they may be immoral but that does not invalidate the industry.
Similarly, cross-pollination has always happened, and the technology to preserve old stock is now better, not worse, than before.
The warning to mistrust the men and women in white needs to be evaluated dispassionately. It has appeal only if one views scientists as a professional body conspiring against the public. It loses its impact if one sees scientists as people compelled to defend all their statements with hard evidence against jealous peers.
The GM scare seems to me to depend on the following scenario: scientist makes dramatic breakthrough, inadvertently creating super-toxin that threatens life and cannot be stopped. The mental image of the super-toxin is something like self-replicating uranium, bursting with energy but causing irreversible damage.
I do not buy this scenario. Scientists did not develop DDT or radioactivity by accident: they knew they were dealing with toxins. On the other hand, many foodstuffs naturally evolved to be as toxic as possible, and have only been made palatable by the slow genetic modification process of selective breeding, practised over the centuries. - Yours, etc.,
ANDREW ROBINSON, Marlborough Road, Donnybrook, Dublin 4.