Viewpoint: Quick start on gene-edited crop research gives UK advantage over rest of Europe

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Camelina. Credit: Scott Chalmers, WADO)

Good news for the UK, but bad news for the anti-science, anti-progress green movement: the Telegraph reports that ‘gene-edited super-crops’ are to be grown in Britain. The government will be exploiting a loophole in EU rules which frees plants which have had their DNA ‘edited’ in a way which could have happened naturally from the restrictions imposed on plants which have been genetically ‘modified’ by the addition of foreign DNA.

This should help us establish a competitive advantage over EU member countries which are still resolutely anti-GM before they eventually decide they should catch up with scientific opinion. It’s also a hopeful sign that the influence of the red-green alliance of anti-capitalists and militant environmentalists is perhaps slowly starting to wane. Opposition to GM does now seem to be in decline, particularly and interestingly with younger people, with a recent Populus poll showing 67 per cent of those aged 18 to 30 broadly in favour of GM.

And quite rightly. The claims made since the nineties that GM ‘Frankenfoods’ would bring disaster have come to nothing. In the countries where GM crops are widely grown nature’s fabric has not been ripped apart. Foodstuffs have not mutated into something from science fiction. In much of the world, GM is well established and mainstream with solid, scientific support.

Read full, original post: GM food is here to stay, so let’s get ahead of the race

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