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for a responsible, fair & sustainable food system

GM wheat will be planted in Hertfordshire

Comment (1 Feb 2017)

Press contact: Liz O'Neill liz[at]gmfreeze.org; 07811 211 404

Commenting on the news that Rothamsted Research has received consent to go ahead with an open-air trial of GM wheat, Liz O’Neill, Director of umbrella campaign group GM Freeze said:

GM Freeze and thirty other organisations submitted a detailed objection to this trial so we are disappointed but not surprised to hear that it is going ahead.

We raised a number of technical concerns about the application itself and highlighted the potential for GM wheat to escape into the wild, as has happened repeatedly with GM wheat trials in the USA. But beyond all the technical detail, we believe that Rothamsted’s researchers have totally missed the point – what is the purpose of growing more wheat in the first place?

World food production already far exceeds the needs of generations to come but people still go hungry. Nobody is starving because of some fundamental flaw with photosynthesis; they are starving because they are poor. Techno-fixes like GM wheat suck up public funding that could make a real difference if it was spent on systemic solutions like waste reduction and poverty eradication. Then we could all enjoy food that is produced responsibly, fairly and sustainably.”