There is no scientific evidence that genetically modified foods are dangerous, but what is worrying is the call from the Green Party to ban research, argues Conor Meade
As a dedicated home chef, as well as professional ecologist, I know that organic vegetables, poultry and dairy just taste better. What matters about this great food is not the label, or the perceived chic of paying more for your food, but rather the mentality of the organic farmer: using nature to get the best from nature. And it shows in the taste.
So it may come as some surprise that I differ from the Green Party, particularly now that it is in government, when it comes to the issue of genetically modified (GM) crops.
The proposed strategy of banning not only the cultivation, but also the ecological risk-assessment of GM crops in Ireland, is worrying and short-sighted. We should of course trade on Ireland's clean green image, as Trevor Sargent said recently when launching his GM-free Ireland idea.
While European consumer sentiment is against the idea of GM, we are indeed wise to market our food produce as GM free, but the notion that we should also ban research on new crop technologies, as Sargent has suggested, is perhaps not so enlightened.
There is, of course, some concern that GM crops might be harmful for us to eat. This is a legitimate concern, just as is the concern for the quality of any food we eat. However from a scientific perspective, there is no reason to believe that GM crops should be any more harmful for us than conventional crops.
Indeed from what we know about the genetic composition of edible plants, GM crops have much same ingredients as the others - and testing their safety continues all the time. It can even be argued that certain GM crops that are resistant to, for example, herbicide or pests, are exposed to far less chemical contamination than most of the food we eat. So clearly it is possible that GM food is not, in fact, bad for us at all.
Another concern is the environment. GM crops may cross with wild relatives or grow outside cultivation, but recent evidence suggests that such is the ferocity of natural selection in wild habitats that only the leanest genomes, honed for survival over thousands of generations, can actually succeed and reproduce.
Pitted against these highly fit wild plants, cultivated crops that have been bred to rely on ample nutrient and water supplies are typically very weak. So for both conventional and GM crops, survival in the wild is just a bare possibility and successful reproduction even less likely.
Certainly the variety of traits that can be bred into crops using GM technology introduces new environmental challenges. We know that climate change is drying the heart of Africa, changing countless lives along the way. There is much hope, therefore, that traits giving increased hardiness, drought resistance and salt tolerance may be introduced to staple crops, traits with a potentially huge benefit for subsistence arid-zone farmers throughout the developing world.
However, these are also the traits with the greatest potential for spread among related wild plants in the desert zone. Here we might face a potentially difficult choice between starvation and conservation. It does not mean, however, that we should ignore the potential breakthroughs that genetic modification may offer us.
On the other hand, herbicide-tolerant GM crops that are licensed for use in Europe really only pose a management problem for our farmers - these plants will only thrive in fields where a particular brand of herbicide is used. For plants growing anywhere else in woodlands, meadows, roadsides and sand dunes, such GM herbicide tolerance is a distinct disadvantage.
Additionally, as we approach the progressive escalation in the cost of petrochemicals, crops which need less pesticides will begin to underpin the commercial viability of agriculture everywhere. Although GM crops are not the panacea for the ills of the developing world, if the technology is put in the hands of publicly funded institutions, it will contribute to building a more sustainable future.
The key to success lies in careful stewardship and this is where research has a critical role to play. There is a growing body of independent, publicly funded scientific research that suggests GM crops are not in themselves harmful to the environment. Put simply, making a new crop via GM methods rather than conventional crossing experiments does not make these GM crops more "risky".
What matters is the new trait that has been put into the crop, be it disease resistance, changed starch content or improved salt tolerance.
European legislation will not allow crops that are potentially hazardous to the environment to be grown here and those that are judged to pose no potential harm must be managed very closely to avoid contamination of other crops. This management process, allowing conventional, organic and GM crops to be grown together, without cross-contamination, is known as co-existence.
We are at the point now of testing co-existence strategies to see if they can work, but the only way we can really do it properly is to do controlled assessments in the field. If we spurn the opportunity to validate in the field the claims made for GM crops, how can our Government stand up and be critical of these claims in Brussels?
Science may conclude at the end of the day that GM is a bad idea for us and for the environment. So be it. But what if science doesn't say this, what if it says GM has indeed great potential to benefit us and the environment, what then?
Probably the only way to put in place a durable strategy for stewardship of GM technology is not to turn our backs on it, but to come to grips with it. Corporate ownership of seed patents is an issue that needs to be addressed, not least to put consumer confidence on a firmer footing. But the problem has only arisen because public science has lagged so far behind the private sector in following new opportunities.
Our public science infrastructure needs to take ownership of the issue, as Prof Liam Downey has pointed out. If we spurn the opportunity, then the GM issue will remain divisive for the foreseeable future.
Extremists on either side will continue to set the agenda. The Green Party took one bull by the horns in recent weeks; for the sake of a policy issue that means much to agricultural Ireland, it can do so again.
Dr Conor Meade lectures in ecology at NUI Maynooth. He co-authored with Dr Ewen Mullins the 2005 paper GM Crop Cultivation in Ireland: Ecological and Economic Considerations for Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy; www.ria.ie