A FEW weeks ago you published an enlightening article from Mr Humphrey Phelps stating the case against GM crops. After the foot and mouth epidemic the article begs the question which way will agriculture take in the future, and have any lessons been learnt from the past?
The first example is the BSE crisis. One wonders if farmers now question what feed is being given to their animals? The practice of feeding cows, which are herbivorous animals, with reclaimed meat products classed as high protein feed was surely suspect. The results are now evident in human health – and frightening!
Another practice which is worrying is the spreading of untreated abbatoir blood and gut waste on farmland which in some cases has been found to contain the deadly bacteria Ecoli 0157 which killed people in Scotland.
In 1998 Mr David Statham, chairman of the Food Committee of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, stated: "Material potentially contaminated with Ecoli 0157 is coming from a processing environment and we are putting it back on the farm. This provides a further source of infection for animals and also the plant crops, fruit crops, and all other things we grow. It's a recipe for disaster."
However, farmers still allow it to be spread on their land! It has even been spread in the Forest area, on a flood plain during wet weather, with the possible pollution of streams and being spread by footpaths through the fields.
Finally we come to GM crops. After these disasters can we afford to go down this uncertain path and the Pandora's box it opens? I understand it is financially attractive to farmers to plant GM crops, but once unleased there is no return to the status quo.
Surely planting genetically engineered herbicide resistant crops is not the way forward for British farmers. It would just continue the pesticide and chemically driven agriculture industry which has brought us so many environmental and health problems.
Agrochemical companies are dominating the seed industry with the means to include a "terminator gene." This means that farmers will have to purchase new seed every year and so be tied in to this monopoly! What hopes for the poor third world farmers?
It is wise to continue to pollute the good earth with pesticides and herbicides with more health risks in the future?
There is some ridicule of the organic movement, but I maintain it is far safer that the chemical warfare that is leashed every year on to the land. Far better to work with nature than against it with possible adverse consequences. – Phil Horsley, Ambleside, Elton, near Newnham.