EcoZeal

It is less than two months since Prince Charles was on the receiving end of a fusillade of scientific, political and commentariat criticism for voicing, yet again, his concerns about GM crops and foods.
He was widely accused of “ignorance” and “Luddism”; of being too rich to care about the hungry, and even of trying to increase sales of his own organic produce. It was put about that UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown was angered by his intervention.

Yet the Prince has responded by stepping up his campaign, making his most anti-GM speech yet, in delivering – by video – the Sir Albert Howard Memorial Lecture to the Indian pressure group Navdanya last Thursday. And he made it clear that he was going to continue.

“The reason I keep sticking my 60-year-old head above an increasingly dangerous parapet is not because it is good for my health,” he said “but precisely because I believe fundamentally that unless we work with nature, we will fail to restore the equilibrium we need in order to survive on this planet.”

True to his word, he plunged straight into the most controversial and emotive of all the debates over GM crops and foods by highlighting the suicides of small farmers. Tens of thousands killed themselves in India after getting into debt.

The suicides were occurring long before GM crops were introduced, but campaigners say that the technology has made things worse because the seeds are more expensive and have not increased yields to match. The biotech industry strongly denies this, but two official reports have suggested that there “could” be a possible link.

Much of the controversy surrounds claims of failures by a Monsanto GM cotton called Bollguard. The GM company says that “farmers in India have found success” with it, and cites a survey in support. Its opponents produce evidence of their own to show the opposite.

But Prince Charles did not stop there. Broadening his offensive, he said that “any GM crop will inevitably contaminate neighbouring fields”, making it impossible to maintain the integrity of organic and conventional crops.

For the first time in history this would lead to “one man’s system of farming effectively destroying the choice of another man’s” and “turn the whole issue into a global moral question.” He quoted Mahatma Gandhi who condemned “commerce without morality” and “science without humanity”.

He added: “One must surely ask the question whether – if only from a precautionary point of view – it might be wise to keep some areas of the world free from GM-based agriculture.”

Source: The Independent