Various elements within the groups which have been opposing the use of genetically-modified foods in this country are continuing to reduce the credibility and effectiveness of the whole lobby which they would claim to represent. The latest destruction of an experimental crop of genetically-modified sugar beet (the fourth attack on a GM food crop here) will do no good to anyone - producer or consumer. All that the perpetrators of this criminal act of vandalism can expect to achieve, if they elude the arm of the law which should be tracking them down, is a delay in the accumulation of scientific knowledge about the safety and efficacy of the crop which they have destroyed.
The growing of this particular crop in east Cork had been approved by the Environmental Protection Agency, with appropriate safeguards and a research protocol which might have gone some way to answering some of the questions raised by those who have expressed concerns about the safety or otherwise of GM food production and consumption. Without such controlled experiments, there can be no furtherance of mankind's knowledge of the effects of genetic modification - good, bad or indifferent. It is legitimate to question how genuine, and how much based in knowledge, rather than in uninformed belief, is the opposition of some people to genetic modification as a technique which has the potential to do either good or damage to people or the environment.
On the evidence from east Cork, at least some of the people actively campaigning against the use of genetic modification do not even want to know whether the technique might be good or bad. Similar attitudes were evident in sectors of the human population when it was first postulated that this planet might be more-or-less spherical, rather than flat as the ancients had assumed. Are we somehow back in the time when it was emotionally impossible for some people to accept that the earth was not flat?
Are words such as "genetic", or "radiation" sufficient these days to trigger hysterical reactions of a similar kind among some people whose basic education should have taught them better? It is as if science did not exist, or as if it were perceived as a religion rather than what it is - the best means available to test a hypothesis by way of conducting experiments under a predetermined scientific protocol with suitable controls. Scientific method is simple and, well used, can ascertain reliable and objective information as no other method can. Are the people who destroyed GM beet crops in this country aware of that, or do they simply not want to know?
A few things need to be done now. Firstly, the Garda investigation needs to be vigorously pursued so that those who wrought the vandalism in east Cork can be brought to book and punished. Further, those who have been publicly lobbying against the further development of genetic modification need - if their case is to retain any credibility - to distance themselves from the vandalism and support such efforts as are being made currently to research scientifically the risks and benefits of GM food production and consumption. And the State needs to encourage, protect and increase the research that can be undertaken to answer such questions and concerns as still hang about the issue of genetic modification. These questions and concerns will be best met by scientifically-established facts. They will not be met at all by ill-informed opinions or by vandalism.