Britannia Radio

Prince Charles warns GM crops risk causing the biggest-ever
environmental disaster

Last Updated: 2:01pm BST 12/08/2008

The mass development of genetically modified crops risks causing the
world's worst environmental disaster, The Prince of Wales has warned.

In his most outspoken intervention on the issue of GM food, the Prince
said that multi-national companies were conducting an experiment with
nature which had gone "seriously wrong".
# The Prince of Wales: 'If that is the future, count me out'

The Prince, in an exclusive interview with the Daily Telegraph, also
expressed the fear that food would run out because of the damage being
wreaked on the earth's soil by scientists' research.

He accused firms of conducting a "gigantic experiment I think with
nature and the whole of humanity which has gone seriously wrong".
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"Why else are we facing all these challenges, climate change and
everything?" .

Relying on "gigantic corporations" for food, he said, would result in
"absolute disaster".

"That would be the absolute destruction of everything.. . and the classic
way of ensuring there is no food in the future," he said.

"What we should be talking about is food security not food production -
that is what matters and that is what people will not understand.

"And if they think its somehow going to work because they are going to
have one form of clever genetic engineering after another then again
count me out, because that will be guaranteed to cause the biggest
disaster environmentally of all time."

Small farmers, in particular, would be the victims of "gigantic
corporations" taking over the mass production of food.

"I think it's heading for real disaster," he said.

"If they think this is the way to go....we [will] end up with millions
of small farmers all over the world being driven off their land into
unsustainable, unmanageable, degraded and dysfunctional conurbations of
unmentionable awfulness."

The Prince of Wales's forthright comments will reopen the whole debate
about GM food.

They will put him on a collision course with the international
scientific community and Downing Street - which has allowed 54 GM crop
trials in Britain since 2000.

His intervention comes at a critical time. There is intense pressure for
more GM products, not fewer, because of soaring food costs and
widespread shortages.

Many scientists believe GM research is the only way to guarantee food
for the world's growing population as the planet is affected by climate
change.

They will be dismayed by such a high profile and controversial
contribution from the Prince of Wales at such a sensitive time.

The Prince will be braced for the biggest outpouring of criticism from
scientists since he accused genetic engineers of taking us into "realms
that belong to God and God alone" in an article in the Daily Telegraph
in 1998.

In the interview the Prince, who has an organic farm on his Highgrove
estate, held out the hope of the British agricultural system encouraging
more and more family run co-operative farms.

When challenged over whether he was trying to turn back the clock, he
said: "I think not. I'm terribly sorry. It's not going backwards. It is
actually recognising that we are with nature, not against it. We have
gone working against nature for too long."

The Prince of Wales cited the widespread environmental damage in India
caused by the rush to mass produce GM food.

"Look at India's Green Revolution. It worked for a short time but now
the price is being paid.

"I have been to the Punjab where you have seen the disasters that have
taken place as result of the over demand on irrigation because of the
hybrid seeds and grains that have been produced which demand huge
amounts of water.

"[The] water table has disappeared. They have huge problems with water
level, with pesticide problems, and complications which are now coming
home to roost.

"Look at western Australia. Huge salinisation problems. I have been
there. Seen it. Some of the excessive approaches to modern forms of
agriculture. "

He said that the scientists were putting too much pressure on nature.

"If you are not working with natural assistance you cause untold
problems. which become very expensive and very difficult to undo.

It places impossible burdens on nature and leads to accumulating
problems which become more difficult to sort out."

In a keynote speech last year the Prince of Wales warned that the world
faces a series of natural disasters within 18 months unless a £15
billion action plan is agreed to save the world's rain forests.

He has set up his own rain forest project with 15 of the world's largest
companies, environmental and economic experts, to try to find ways to
stop their destruction.

Only two weeks ago British GM researchers lobbied ministers for their
crops to be kept in high-security facilities or in fields at secret
locations across the country to prevent them from being attacked and
destroyed.

They spoke out after protesters ripped up crops in one of only two GM
trials to be approved in Britain this year.

Scientists claim the repeated attacks on their trials are stifling vital
research to evaluate whether GM crops can reduce the cost and
environmental impact of farming and whether they will grow better in
harsh environments where droughts have devastated harvests.

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