UK:UK POLITICIANS, academics and farmers have rounded on Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, after he claimed that a global shift towards genetically modified crops would destroy the earth's environment.
The prince, who started an organic food brand 18 years ago, argued in an interview with the Daily Telegraph yesterday that increased global planting of GM crops would lead to "disaster".
He said "clever genetic engineering" by "gigantic corporations" would "cause the biggest disaster environmentally of all time".
"If they think this is the way to go . . . we [will] end up with millions of small farmers all over the world being driven off their land into unsustainable, unmanageable, degraded and dysfunctional conurbations of unmentionable awfulness."
But Phil Willis, chairman of the UK's all-party parliamentary science committee, said the use of science in farming had helped feed billions of people. "His lack of scientific understanding and his willingness to condemn millions of people to starvation in areas like sub-Saharan Africa is absolutely bewildering," he said.
Des Turner, a Labour MP and member of the same committee, said the prince was behaving like a "Luddite".
The economic and environmental benefits of GM technology remain a matter of debate. Most of the GM crops planted in the US have been created to resist pests rather than increase yields.
The prince was backed by Mike Childs of Friends of the Earth who said he had "hit the nail on the head" about the "false solution" presented by GM crops.
The debate over GM crops comes as farmers and the food industry call on the British public, who have shunned GM foods, to reconsider their value as food prices rise. - ( Financial Times service)