Tuesday, 11th May 2010
EU must overhaul GM legislation
According to the United Nations there are over one billion hungry people across the world. The UN say that the economic recession, combined with a rise in the cost of staple foods in poor countries, is largely to blame for the highest number of undernourished people since 1970.
Every year 6.5 million children die of hunger. Six million people are born every month across the world. By 2030 the world population will have expanded to such an extent that we will require a 50 percent increase in food production to meet anticipated demand. By 2080 global food production would need to double.
Genetically Modified (GM) foods are considered a possible solution in developing countries where biotech (BT) crops could help to solve hunger problems. However, with deserts spreading and an area the size of Ukraine being taken out of agricultural food production every year due to drought and as a direct consequence of climate change, global food production is declining rather than expanding. We are gradually being trapped by a deadly pincer movement.
Rather that exploit technological advances and benefit EU science and jobs, Europe is setting its face against Genetically Modified (GM) foods and falling for the crazy 'Frankenstein food' propaganda orchestrated by the Greens and seized on by the tabloid press.
But now the new European Commission wants to find a way around the cumbersome EU legislation on GMs without having to start a detailed and inevitably time-consuming review of current regulations. Following the Commission’s controversial approval of a GM potato in March, Health & Consumer Commissioner John Dalli is proposing to table plans in June which will allow those countries who wish to grow GM crops the freedom to do so, while sanctioning the GM-free stance of other countries. This may produce a paradox for the UK where DEFRA may be inclined to agree to GM crops in England, while the SNP government in Scotland remains strongly opposed.
Giving farmers the freedom to choose whether or not to grow GM crops would represent a significant breakthrough in Europe. It can only be hoped that Member States will use science instead of prejudice when it came to biotech crops. Ludicrously, the European Parliament’s Environment Committee only last week approved an amendment that calls for all meat from animals fed with GM feed to be labelled, despite the fact that scientists in the Food Standards Agency have said that no DNA trace of GM feed can survive the digestive process in any animal.
Currently Europe imports around 32 million tonnes of GM soya annually which is then mixed into animal feeds for cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry. Most of the meat we eat has been fed on GM feeds and this new burden on producers to force them to label their products as fed with GMs will simply encourage consumers to purchase grass-fed beef from Brazil and Argentina to the detriment of our EU livestock sector. I will do everything in my power to overturn this daft proposal when it comes up for voting before the full European Parliament in Strasbourg next month.
Last year I met with a group of African farmers who told me about the huge success of agricultural bio-technology in Africa. It has transformed the income that they can earn from their crops, provided extra food for their communities and feed for their livestock and helped to reduce pesticide and fungicide use on crops because the crops are bred to resist disease and insect attacks. New breeds of drought resistant maize and rice are in the pipeline now as well.
The first GM crops were introduced in North America in 1995 and in 2008, more than 125 million hectares of GM crops were being commercially grown worldwide. Even after 15 years of large commercial use no negative effects of GMOs have been substantiated. GM crops are by no means a perfect solution but rather a tool that can assist poorer countries to improve food production. Against a background of a rapidly expanding world population and declining area of land available for agricultural use, the world's farmers need every tool in the toolkit to enable them to feed the hungry and our expanding world population.
