London (30.11.07)
– For years, opponents of GM technology have argued there’s nothing
in it for consumers – it’s all for the farmers’ benefit
(to say nothing of those wicked biotech companies who put up all the risk
capital to undertake the developments). Not, you might have thought, that
there is much wrong if farmers do benefit. They, too, are people and indeed
consumers. And if they produce their crops more efficiently we all ought to
benefit with prices lower than they would otherwise be (cf. organic produce).
Moreover, in the poorer parts of the world where many people live on a subsistence
basis, farmers often consume their own products. Any benefit to them as farmers
is ipse facto benefit to them as consumers.
However that may be, there is now clear benefit for rich-country consumers,
many generations and many miles away from farming.
We have for years been told about the health effects of omega-3 oils and how
we should consume so many portions of oily fish each week to protect against
cardiovascular diseases and slow mental decline in elderly people as well
as being necessary for the healthy development of a the foetal brain.
Those essential fatty acids are produced only by algae; they reach us because
the algae are eaten by tuna, salmon and mackerel – and we eat them or
the meat, milk or eggs from animals reared at least partly on fish meal.
The trouble is that we don’t eat as much as we should and, if we were
totry to do so, there would be so much more pressure put on fisheries that
they couldn’t cope. We need to be able to make the acids in crops.
But, said Professor Johnathan Napier of Rothamsted Research, GM was the only
way of doing that. The genes have to be transferred from algae into one or
more appropriate crop plants. No amount of traditional breeding methods or
mutagenesis will do that because the genes are simply not present in higher
plants.
Professor Napier said: "There isn't an alternative to this. The question
is, where are you going to source these fatty acids if your only source is
in decline and unsustainable. You can't just be a naysayer."
Let the anti-GM brigade ponder that one for a while.
Source:
Mark Henderson. GM crops are the only way to solve Britons' diet failings,
say scientists. The Times (16.11.07) (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2879567.ece)
<<<back
