Country life
Princely passions
Leanda de Lisle
Blue cotton is supposed to be one of the potentially 'green' selling points of genetic modification. You see, it won't have to be chemically dyed before it's made up into Levi jeans. As far as I'm aware, they've yet to discover a stone-washed gene for stone- washed jeans, but perhaps that's to come. Meanwhile, there. are two questions we need to ask ourselves about GM crops: `Are they dangerous?' and 'Do we need them?' Earth-loving vegans have been eat- ing GM food with no ill effect for some time. You see, vegan cheese has to be genetically modified to enable it to be made without the milk-curdling properties of rennet, which comes from a calf's stom- ach. However, the question that bothers me is not so much 'Is GM food safe to eat?' as 'Are GM crops safe to grow?'
I'm not a scientist, but as far as I'm aware evolution takes place at a genetic level and over long periods of time therefore the trials we've run in Britain can't tell us what the long-term conse- quences of growing GM crops will be. It sounds to me like a basis for a sequel to Revenge of the Killer Tomato at the very least. Are they worth it? It's interesting to hear that eight hectares of GM rape would provide all the insulin we need in this coun- try and perhaps, after looking at the bal- ance of risk, we may decide there are small areas where GM will have something to offer. However, I don't believe it need or should have anything to do with mass food production.
We already have cheap and plentiful food in this country and our farmers have learnt some lessons from BSE. The feed manufacturers poisoned their cattle and then walked away from the problem with the politicians following behind. British farmers know full well that if anything went wrong with GM crops the chemical compa- nies would get off scot-free again. The farmers would be the ones damned for being greedy and they would again carry the bill and the blame. Unfortunately, in areas of the world like China, where food is neither cheap nor plentiful, politicians are looking to genetic modification as the answer to all their problems. It won't be.
On the contrary, it is a distraction from the real answer which is husbandry. By bet- ter husbandry I don't mean mediaeval strip farming, pre-Inca terracing, or Highgrove- style organic vegetable growing. I mean the kind of farming methods in which science and nature are used in balance. At the cut- ting edge of the industry, farmers are plant- ing hedgerows so that pests are kept down by their natural predators with minimal use of sprays. The result is high yields and cheap food. We are told that GM will pro- tect crops from sprays, so that you can spray a whole field and kill everything except the crop. It's not a very appetising thought and the Chinese may find that, if you ignore the environment, it has a way of striking back.
There is an irony in Prince Charles's love of the 18th century. It was a time of agri- cultural, industrial and architectural revo- lution, not nostalgia. It was the age of reason, not the age of things being left to God. I don't think 18th-century man would have had much time for Prince Charles, but it seems that in our egalitarian age it takes a prince to remind us that science should be our servant, not our master — and I am grateful for that.
`I'm very worried, he's trying to grow a moustache.'
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