CropScience v GeneWatch - York's "great GM Debate"

Does progress means 'contamination, irreversibility and corporate control'? It's a 'great benefit to farmers'?

* about 100 turned up
* started off with Cllr. Andrew Waller [of the new Lib Dem lead council] doing a 'show of hands' survey: "Do you feel you know a lot about GM?" and "Do you have a strong opinion about GM?" which revealed fairly clearly that the gathering consisted of 'the usual suspects' in the main.
* Speakers were Dr Julian Little of Bayer CropScience (what do these companies have against the humble space bar?) and Dr Sue Mayer of Genewatch.

Sue Mayer ran through all the various micro- and macro-scale arguments against GM and gave useful examples, but her strongest point was one she made at the beginning and again at the end, in a sense overarching all her other points: that we now know that we need to do 'something different' with our farming - and does GM fit into with 'doing something different'? It comes from a system which has created intensification. It can be difficult to say no to PROGRESS but if we don't say it now, we certainly won't have the chance to say it later. She essentially stressed the precautionary principle: that it is the wrong thing at the moment, under the circumstances it is being offered, not necessarily that it is wrong for all time. One particular circumstance which makes it wrong at the moment was that no system of liability for environmental damage or cross-contamination has been worked out, and efforts to do so have been strenuously resisted by the industry.

Then Dr Little (nice man, unassuming) spoke: he didn't come from the 'GM as panacea for all humanity's ills and just the same as what we have always done' camp. However, he said that wherever GM has been tried it has been shown to have great benefits to farmers, and gave the great increase in uptake of GM in developing countries as evidence that it is good, an argument I have never really understood, given the trading relationships that operate in many developing countries. He pointed out that much of the increase has been in China, by its government, rather than by companies.

A point for the cynics who think this whole exercise is a farce is that the farm-scale trials will not be complete until September, by which time the public debate will be long over.

Questions: 6 anti, 1 pro, 1 neutral. Contamination, irreversibility and corporate control were the main topics.
We then worked in groups to come up with 3 main issues, 3 main risks, 3 main benefits. Same issues emerged as the main concerns actually.


AND A JOLLY GOOD TIME WAS HAD BY ALL!