Ireland thrives on an image of producing food which is green and pure. It finds a ready place at the top end of the international marketplace. Allowing extensive growth of genetically modified crops is not the way to consolidate the future of Irish food industry, says Genetic Concern, even if other economies are facilitating this new technology.
Genetic engineering is a complex technology only recently introduced into agriculture and the food chain. It comes without fully addressing adequate safety, says the group, an alliance supported by An Taisce, the Green Party, environmental groups and food organisations including health food stores, which is committed to legal means of opposition.
"Most people are only just beginning to grasp that it means moving around genes in a way that would never ordinarily happen in nature," says Clare Watson, who was given leave in July to seek a judicial review of the Environmental Protection Agency decision to allow Monsanto to test genetically modified beet here.
The EPA must be satisfied that there will be no adverse effect on human health or the environment arising from genetically engineered plants, aside from company claims that they bring, for example, resistance to disease.
Genetic Concern says the safety issues are as yet unanswered and a moratorium is needed on release of crops with genetically modified organisms into the environment. The group believes the licence was not granted in accordance with regulations on the deliberate release of the organisms.
The outcome of the case will have a critical bearing on how potentially hundreds of test applications are dealt with.
It does not accept the effectiveness of the safety evaluation process in the US where plant bio technology has taken off. (This contrasts with the predominantly favourable US public attitudes to its regulatory process.) Genetic Concern points to "the ever-revolving door" of people employed in regulatory agencies going to work in industry and vice-versa, but it accepts such a practice operates throughout the whole of US public life.
In Ireland, it deplores permission for the beet test without "proper public consultation and consensus". It is particularly concerned about what it considers to be "a potentially dangerous technology" getting the green light without an oral hearing or even a Dail debate to discuss whether people want to take part in this experiment, especially in the light of more than 400 objections.
Clare Watson rejects the view that the technology is inherently safe and cites errors and problems associated with such crops - a cotton failure in parts of the US, the withdrawal of a canola crop in Canada - and culminating last week in beet from a Dutch trial being used mistakenly in a sugar factory, where it was processed into sugar and animal feed.