The UK is stepping up its campaign to bring large-scale farming of genetically-modified crops into Europe, with Environment Secretary Owen Paterson expected to become the second senior official in recent days to ask the EU to loosen existing controls.
In the thrust of the speech that has been leaked to the
Independent, the Conservative minister is expected to say that
Britain risks being “left behind” if it fails to adopt
increasingly widespread GM crops.
“What we want to do is start a dialogue within Europe on GM
based upon the science,” a senior source told the newspaper.
“The point about GM is not simply about food production. There
are wider potential environmental and economic benefits to the
technology both in the UK and internationally.”
Specifically, Paterson will argue that bioengineering could be
used to create disease-resistant wildlife and develop new
pharmaceuticals.
The speech appears to be part of a concerted government campaign
to overturn the EU’s strict reluctance to issue commercial
licenses for GM crops, following a similar statement made by
Science Minister David Willetts on Tuesday.
“We believe that GM crops can help make agriculture more
efficient and also just as importantly more sustainable, by, for
example, reducing the use of pesticides and the use of fossil
fuels,” he said.
“There are just too many 21st-Century technologies that Europe
is just being very slow to adopt… one productive way forward is
to have this discussion as part of a wider need for Europe to
remain innovative rather than a museum of 20th century
technology.”
Currently, each genetically-modified crop has to be authorized by
an EU commission. As of now, Monsanto’s MON810 maize and BASF’s
Amflora potato are the only two plants permitted for commercial
cultivation in the bloc.
Despite a large Europe-wide scientific report in 2010 concluding
that bioengineered food poses no special hazard, eight EU member
states have also banned the cultivation of genetically-modified
crops altogether, with Italy expected to become the ninth.
Less than 0.2 per cent of all food grown in Europe is
genetically-modified, while 12 percent of all arable land around
the world is planted with GM seeds.
While previously low demand from consumers and farmers were cited
as reasons for avoiding scientifically-engineered varieties,
ministers are likely to use a just-published poll of 600 British
farmers, 61 percent of whom say they would like to plant GM
seeds.
“Farmers are becoming more and more aware that climate change
doesn’t mean a gradual rise in temperatures but rather a stream
of extreme weather events. GM technology is one possible way of
mitigating this,” said Martin Haworth, director of policy at
the National Farmers Union.
But the public remains skeptical.
A YouGov poll released Wednesday shows that only 21 per cent of
Britons are in favor of growing GM crops, with 35 per cent
explicitly opposed to the technology.
An estimated two million people, many of them in Europe, turned
out for global anti-GM protests last month.
Producers of bioengineered foods, which are often made by
manipulating the DNA of plants and introducing foreign organisms
into it, say that they increase yields, better resist disease,
and decrease the need for pesticides.
Opponents claim that they pose health risks and contaminate the
environment. They also believe that patents on prominent GM crops
give excessive power to corporations that develop them, primarily
market leader Monsanto.