Madam, - The Irish Environmental Protection Agency recently gave the German Agrochemical company BASF the go-head to test its blight-resistant potatoes on a one-hectare field in Co Meath. On May 6th, the media reported that Green Party leader Trevor Sargent and others were going to oppose this trial.
As an outsider to your country it strikes me as ironic that people in Ireland, which suffered most from potato blight over the past 200 years, are now opposing tests to improve control of this disease with modern plant-breeding methods.
Scientists depend on field tests in order to decide whether a new crop variety is more appropriate than the older ones, for instance by requiring less fungicide and still giving a good yield.
The attitude of the opponents to GM crops reminds me of the idea behind a wonderful old Guinness advert: "I don't like Guinness because I never tried it".
It is sad that green parties all over Europe have allowed themselves to be dragged into fundamental opposition to genetically modified crops, while these crops are spreading all over the world and more and more farmers are planting them. - Yours, etc,
RICHARD BRAUN, Bern, Switzerland.
Madam, - The strident opposition of GM Free Ireland and the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers' Association to proposed field trials of genetically-modified blight-resistant potatoes (Irish Times, May 6th) defies logic.
Modern farmers use systemic fungicides against blight. These are "organic" compounds (in the original chemical sense of the word), are usually heavy-metal free, and biodegrade in a few weeks. Organic growers also have to spray, as it is the only effective control against blight. Ironically, however, their rules restrict them to traditional (19th-century) copper-based sprays. Copper is a poisonous and persistent heavy metal, with long-term environmental effects, and copper-based sprays are soon to be banned completely by the EU.
There is negligible danger of cross-contamination of conventional crops by pollen from GM potatoes since, as every gardener knows, potatoes do not set true seed but are propagated solely by vegetative tubers (literally, cloned chips off the old block).
A blight-resistant potato has been the Holy Grail of plant breeders for the past 150 years. At last, modern biotechnology has the prospect of producing such a potato, which will require no chemical spraying - something that one would expect to be welcomed wholeheartedly by environmentalists, organic growers and consumers. - Yours, etc,
CON O'ROURKE, Park Lane, Dublin 4.