It is unfortunate that the same media that give such views a level of credence for which they do not always justify even as the effects of their assertions has a disproportionate effect on the lives of thousands, even millions of others.
GMOs in celebrity crosshairs
The two decade plus debate over genetically modified foods, which now include CRISPR gene edited crops being rolled out in the US, Japan, China and other countries is a prime example. In 1999 an organization called ‘Five Year Freeze’ campaigned for a postponement on the use of ‘GM’ crops, an effort supported by a wide range of people who, far from experts in the field of plant breeding, added their weight and influence to a campaign froze the technology’s adoption in Europe. Even today, despite the adoption of GMOs and CRISPR innovation in dozens of countries, the rancorous debate stirred by 1990s activists has effectively held back the development of technologies already shown to contribute significantly to the greater good of many in developing nations as well as reducing the adverse impact of agriculture in developed countries.
Why so many people give credence to the views of individuals who are not qualified to comment is a mystery, but I doubt if any of them have ever gone to be hungry or toiled away in a field removing weeds. In particular, Prince Charles who has a keen interest in agriculture and ‘organic’ systems really ought to know better.
HRH’s intervention into crop biosciences began in 1998 when he wrote to the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, criticizing the development of genetically modified foods. In the letter, he told the prime minister that an unfamiliar technology was moving faster than public acceptance. The prince accused the biotech industry and scientists of “increasingly frantic promotional efforts” and praised Blair for agreeing to meet opponents of GMOs, insulating them from the charge that they were “hysterical, extreme and anti-progressive”.
His efforts were welcomed by various bodies as The Soil Association, Five Year Freeze and Greenpeace, which helped snowball a campaign largely based on either questionable or badly misunderstood science. The Association of Biotechnology Companies were condemned for ‘putting profit before people’. To respond what verged on mass hysteria, the biotech consortium invited a number of independent scientists to join the EU funded CROPGEN (of which I was a member) to try to explain the facts and true nature of the issue. We were often invited by politicians to justify our opinions, but the vast majority of the ‘fact finders’ were lawyers or historians with had little scientific education which made it rather difficult!
No surprise that celebrities like HRH had outsized influence. In 2008 he was interviewed for The Daily Telegraph, with yet another angle of attack on science:
The mass development of genetically modified crops risks causing the world’s worst environmental disaster. He also claimed that the world would run out of food because of the damage being wreaked on the earth’s soil by scientists’ research. He made these claims when time when the use of insect resistant Bt crops had cut the use of pesticides growing corn, soybeans and cotton in the US by more than 50%, he said multinational food companies were conducting a “gigantic experiment with nature and the whole of humanity which has gone seriously wrong”, and claimed GM crops would “cause the biggest disaster environmentally of all time.
Charles opposition was unrelenting, irking the rest of the royal family, in 2014 his Sister, Princess Anne, then president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, rebuked him publicly:
Man has been tinkering with food production and plant development for such a long time that it’s a bit cheeky to suddenly get nervous about doing it when fundamentally you are doing much the same thing.
So concerned by the wayward science, she has taken the bully pulpit to promote GM biotechnology numerous subsequent times, in 2017 and 2020, fearful that his views would block Britain from embracing technologies that most progressive economies in the rest of the world are already exploiting to lower food costs and meet sustainability challenges. “It has been an enormous advantage in many parts of the world to use GM wisely for very specific environments,” Anne said in an interview.
Can we escape the celebrity dismissal of cutting-edge farming technologies?
The agricultural revolution of the past 1,000 years or so has fallen into three overlapping stages: mechanical, chemical and genetic.
The first involved the use of animals and then powered machinery to drive cultivation equipment and tools. The second developed fertilizers such as phosphate to enhance the fertility of soils. The third was about the development of improved varieties of many crops.
The last is the key one here, not least because Prince Charles appears to be against hybrid seeds, which were first patented in the 1950s, as well as GM ones. One hundred years ago a scientist named George Shull found that by crossing two different varieties of maize, the new strain produced considerably higher yields and grains of better and more consistent quality.
Many people found this characteristic both amazing and somewhat difficult to believe, particularly as subsequent generations failed to exhibit these characteristics to the same extent, which meant farmers were obliged to purchase new seed each year. Some people accused Shull of practicing “witchcraft” and of producing a technology for his own ends. There is remarkable similarity between the science rejectionists of Shull’s ear and Prince Charles’s position today.
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This technique is known as hybridization and almost all of today’s maize (corn) varieties are grown from this “F1” seed. For more than 50 years, farmers have been willing to pay a premium for patented hybrid seeds, and more recently GM seeds, as the considerable jump in production more than exceeded the marginal extra costs of buying seeds annually. Even Patrick Holden [Read GLP profile], the former director of the Soil Association and now head of the Sustainable Food Trust—a close friend of the prince—openly admits that he grows F1 carrots, which are sold as organic. Presumably Prince Charles approves of this practice?
I am reminded of the suggestion made some time ago by Professor Steve Jones of University College London that the best thing the prince could do would be to take an A-level in biology: it would help him to understand the irrationality of his opposition to GM seeds
What might the farm biotech future bring?
Modern seed varieties, whether bred by hybridization, random genetic mutations, mutagenesis by radiation or harsh chemicals or by the more precise GM methods used by the “clever” genetic engineers (as the prince derisively describes them), continue to make a significant contribution to agricultural productivity throughout the world. GM technology is merely another stage in the process of producing better varieties of crops.
Like the other stages of the agricultural revolution, GM technologies introduce some downsides, almost all of which show up in slightly different from in non-GMO conventional or organic farming. But these are far outweighed by the enormous advantages it offers: the potential to increase dramatically yields, the quality of crops harvested all while enhancing the crops ability to thrive during a period of increased climate instability.
Moreover, GM crops are still in their infancy: the future gains are extremely exciting to contemplate. Think of the many thousands of people in Asia who suffer blindness from a lack of vitamin A in their diet: rice, their primary source of carbohydrate, contains no vitamin A. Yet the insertion of a few genes into rice plants could help reduce this appalling condition dramatically — what’s known as Golden Rice— has been developed free of charge by dedicated scientists and corporations who devoted their technology with no financial strings. Golden Rice is now being rolled out in the Philippines, and Bangladesh is next—if activists don’t succeed in scaring the public and public officials, and scuttling it.
There are the many farmers who would prefer not to spray their crops with an insecticide when they could grow a variety—say of South African cotton resistant to certain pests or brinjal (eggplant) in Bangladesh.
Or ask the thousands of Spanish, German and French farmers already growing GM varieties of maize whether they should be banned from doing so; you will receive a very clear answer: they embrace this technological advancement, as it has resulted in lower costs, higher yields, and less toxic chemicals to control pests. But the most dramatic benefits would come in developing countries. Of the world’s 12 million farmers, more than 90 per cent are regarded as “resource poor” and derive more than 80 per cent of their income from farming. For them, GM crops have the potential to transform their lives for the better. We should not deny the millions of people who might benefit from this science by demanding that it be stopped, as Prince Charles is doing.
Does privilege promote poverty?
The privileged prince also blames a variety of other ills, such as farming’s impact on the climate, on modern agriculture more generally, yet he fails to see that GM technology is already part of the solution. He is worried, for instance, about the huge salination problems faced by farmers in many parts of the world. Soil becoming too salty is indeed a problem in places. But GM technology offers us the chance to develop crop varieties that will not just survive but thrive in such conditions.
Are we to understand that we should abandon the best chance we have of producing crops from areas of land, which, for a variety of reasons, have become unusable? Surely not. Prince Charles frets that the world’s food production is in the hands of a few massive companies at the expense of many small farmers. Factually, that’s not true, although there is no question that until recently, multi-national corporations were the few organizations willing to finance what has turned out to be billion pound research and development projects. Government’s were not prepared to take those risks, although more recently, China has become a huge investor in advanced crop biotechnology, and the discovery of CRISPR and other forms of gene editing has opened the door for lower cost innovators. But until the last decade, it was only through those companies’ substantial investment in science that we consumers had the opportunity to benefit from this technology.
Opposition to crop innovation remains intense in the organic industry, and among its acolytes, such as the prince. It’s not been easy for the scientific community to address the concerns of the small but highly influential organic farming lobby: the public does not speak our language but they buy their organic beans. However, scientists have to engage more and promote the findings of independent agencies that have evaluated GM crops. We need to help circulate data properly assessed by independent experts such as the Food Standards Agency.
For its part, the FSA has long maintained there is no reason to believe that GM foods pose any higher risk than foods grown from conventional seeds. Indeed, I would argue that because they are far more rigorously tested than other seeds and foods, GM products are almost certainly safer.
As Prince Charles sips his favorite whisky, he might consider that it is almost certainly made using grain from plants bred thanks to advances in plant biotechnology. Yes, your Highness: GM crops and more recently foods grown using CRISPR, really do benefit us all.
Jonathan Harrington is a chartered biologist specialising in agricultural crop technologies. He is a visiting lecturer at Cardiff University School of Biosciences. Read his article from 2009 in The Guardian as to why he defied the British GMO ban to plant genetically modified maize on his Welsh farm.
