The temperature surrounding the genetically modified food controversy has risen sharply in Britain after 22 prominent scientists came forward to defend the research of Dr Arpad Pusztai. The heat has become uncomfortable for the Blair government, which yesterday defended such food. The research appears to show that rats fed genetically modified potatoes developed signs of immune system damage. That is only part of a complex story, but if it were translatable into a food consumed by humans, it would be not be unreasonable to fear that GM foods could cause an appalling toll, considerably worse than the cost to date of new variant CJD, the human equivalent of BSE.
Recent days have been marked by the introduction of hysteria into the British debate. The issue has suddenly become political, beyond the realm of often inaccessible and in this case necessarily complex science. It has become identified in voters' minds as a matter of possibly grave health concern. The already popular unease with the technology is followed now with what seems like evidence to justify fear. There is the perception too that Mr Blair is vulnerable in the face of scientific uncertainty and growing public concern, which his government grossly under-estimated.
Another factor fanning hysteria is that several British newspapers have mounted vociferous campaigns against GM foods. There is, no doubt, a need for caution about GM foods, as Dr Colin Hill of UCC argues in this newspaper today. But campaigning journalism elsewhere has made old-fashioned reporting almost redundant. As a result multinationals such as Monsanto now seem reluctant to engage in the "calm, scientifically-based debate" they previously supported.
Dr Pusztai - if his former employers at the Rowett Institute are to be believed - initially misinterpreted results and went public before they were peer-reviewed and published. It so happened, however, that his overall conclusions were correct. Secondly, and more importantly, he was working on lectins, known to be poisonous to the animal/human body, notably to digestive systems. Lectins may be "natural insecticides" found in some flowers and beans; yet there is sufficient research to indicate a biotechnology company would be highly unlikely to develop a GM food producing the quantity of lectins that featured in Pusztai's investigation, if at all.
This is not to suggest there is not tremendous validity in Dr Pusztai's work. He has shown such "feeding tests" are not being routinely done with GM foods being commercially developed. They should be mandatory. There is every indication that unease among Irish consumers about GM foods is just as strong as in Britain. In spite of initiating a consultation process last August, it seems as if the Government is nowhere nearer an unambivalent national policy on GM foods that has built into it the correct degree of precaution and consumer protection.