Readers' letters

Your leader ('GM crops are just not wanted', March 24) sacrifices integrity for the popularist view. In its day did you denounce the steam engine, the car and the computer and mobile phone? I think not!

GM science has many potential benefits - a massive reduction in the use of unpleasant chemicals being but one. At a recent NFU conference, Tony Blair urged farmers to adopt change and modernise, however here in North Yorkshire do we apply the Luddite mentality and return to the pitch fork and scythe?

Those farmers who have agreed to allow experimentation on their land should be applauded not hounded, intimidated and pressurised into withdrawing from the vital research. This smacks of anarchy!

The Evening Press should stick to what it is good at, report the facts, and not descend into sensationalism when facts are scarce and hype and myth 'rule'.

P B and J M Knaggs,

Church Fenton,

Tadcaster.

...Your editorial left us in little doubt of your views on GM foods - which I shared completely until the recent Channel 4 documentary.

If GM foods can cross-pollinate and breed super-weeds, if they survive herbicides which kill all other plants and the wildlife which lives on them and if they can be made sterile so poor farmers have no seeds to save for next year, GM crops must be stopped.

However, if they can grow in poor soils without irrigation or artificial fertiliser, if they can resist pests and viruses which commonly destroy up to 80 per cent of a poor yield, then they are the best prospect so far for alleviating hunger and starvation in the Third World.

Scientists are sometimes over-enthusiastic, sometimes arrogant and sometimes wrong, but scientists have created the comforts and convenience of the modern age.

We should not simply block new ideas: we should encourage development, but under the strictest controls.

It may be too soon and too risky for field-scale GM trials, but given proper safeguards we should not rule them out forever.

Anthony Day,

Lastingham Terrace,

York.

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