EU must open up on GM food

Genetically modified (GM) technology is shaping our lives, but European farmers are being told that they are not allowed to have any part of it.

It's being used routinely in our medicine, industry and our food.

There are now 170m hectares of GM crops being grown worldwide, almost all of which is produced outside the EU.

Despite the fact that billions of people and animals have been consuming GM plant varieties without any ill effects for nearly 20 years, the EU remains a no-go zone.

The ultimate irony is that millions of tonnes of GM feeds, principally soya and maize, are imported into the EU every year to help feed the animals that we, in turn, consume.

Our policy makers are gradually realising the lunacy of the current situation.

A relatively low-key conference in Dublin last week revealed a significant sea-change in opinion within the ranks of senior academics and officials from around the world.

Run by the Environmental Protection Agency delegates at the conference, also heard from local experts such as Teagasc's Ewan Mullins.

He estimates that our 9,000ha of potatoes is sprayed annually with up to 360 tonnes of fungicides.

If anything, the amount of chemical potato growers are using is increasing as they battle with ever evolving strains of blight.

All the while, the GM technology to allow blight resistant potatoes to be grown is ready to be rolled out.

It is just one example of the blinkered approach that we in Europe have against GM.

The EU's Food Safety Authority, EFSA, cleared GM as "safe for conventional production" years ago. But regulators have stuck to the precautionary 'better safe than sorry' approach ever since.

That's fine but how many years must pass before we can accept that GM technology is safe?

The GM potato trial in Oakpark might help de-mystify the technology, but Ireland is no great leader on this subject.

Our stance in many decisions on GM at EU level has been to simply abstain from voting.

While European politicians sit on the fence, the rest of the world moves on.

Billions are being spent on R&D by the global agri sector to increase production to meet a 70pc hike in food demand by 2050. But more and more of the R&D is being diverted away from the traditional tools of agro-chemicals in favour of the biosciences that foster developments in GM.Independent