Respect My Right to Choose GM Foods

John Hepburn, the Greenpeace anti-GM Campaign Leader, has told us that transferring a gene from one species to another -- the process of genetic modification (GM) which is also known as genetic engineering (GE) -- is "inherently unpredictable" (The Land, April 22, page 8).

I guess that makes cotton -- with about 90 per cent of growers now planting GM cotton -- our most inherently unpredictable crop!

The anti-GM campaigners usually also tell us it is not natural.  Then again, so much of what we use and consume is not natural and a product of science and technology.

I tried my 15-year old daughter's lip gloss the other day.  I have never tasted anything so "artificial".  Yet it is not being banned.

I sometimes think we should ban flying in airplanes and mobile phone -- but I love the internet so it should stay.

I have been told people will never accept GM because it is not natural to transfer genes between species.

The problem with this argument is that professors of genetics can explain how genes move between species naturally.

The most famous mobile gene is Mariner (named after Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner").  It has been found in many species, both plant and animal.  These mobile genes apparently move about by hitching onto viruses, and some may be transmitted by mites.  The presence of the Mariner gene doesn't frighten me.  I am actually rather impressed.

GM foods don't frighten me either.  In Sydney last year, Greenpeace re-launched its True Food Guide.  The big names of the Australian food scene attended the launch.  Margaret Fulton declared that she hoped to keep Australia free from GM food and thus our food "safe to eat for my children, grand children and great grandchildren".

Never mind that the fast food shop down the road was probably selling fish and chips cooked in vegetable oil produced from cotton seed from GM cotton plants.

I can respect Margaret Fulton's desire not to eat GM food -- in the same way that I respect the rights of Moslems not to eat pork -- but the anti-GM campaigners do not appear to accept my right to choose GM.

I know some Woolworths and Safeway stores now sell cinnamon donuts made from GM soy.  I applaud Woollies for being brave enough to do so.

I asked a friend what she thought of the anti-GM activist last week painting "Stop GE Imports" on the side of the ship carrying 13,000 tonnes of GM soy meal from the US;  feed for Ingham chickens and perhaps also some dairy cows.

"Greenpeace is doing its job", she replied.  Mr Hepburn would have appreciated that answer and then asked for a donation.

Once upon a time the protest might have been against the importation of stock fed from an overseas competitor.  I guess we are now benefiting in a roundabout sort of way, from the US farm subsidies.

Unlike Greenpeace -- which makes money out of stunts -- Monsanto and Bayer are dependent on the commercial success of their actual products.

With the continued moratoriums on the commercial planting of GM canola it is Greenpeace, however, which has had the big wins of late.  Fancy our state governments preventing planting food crops on the basis of belief.

The decision should be left to the market -- so people like me can choose GM and Margaret Fulton can go organic.

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