Sir, - Con O'Rourke (August 30th) writes that genetically modified maize "has been consumed regularly, in various forms, by hundreds of millions of North Americans over the past decade, with no harm to anybody".
I would question this assertion. Can we really be so sure? Who is to say that the malaise which affects the American community today is not attributable to their less-than-perfect eating habits, which may or may not include ingestion of GM foods?
I believe the US of present times to be a very sick society. One has only to look at the antics of their Top Man, and ponder the fact that most United States citizens seem to have a permanent appointment with their psychiatrist, to conclude that there is something seriously amiss with the mental stability of the average American.
For further proof, just tune in to one of the various chat shows on the box - and cringe.
Are GM foods responsible for this pathetic state of affairs? No-one knows for sure - we only have our experience of feeding cattle with modified foodstuffs to go on, to see what repercussions man's interference with nature can wreak.
That experiment was far from reassuring, resulting , as we are now aware, in the onset of BSE. So, with such a track record, why blame Africans for their reluctance to eat unnatural produce?
More good would be done by the likes of Mr O'Rourke (and, indeed, the rest of us) if we were, instead to vent our spleen on the Spaniards - fellow Europeans - who, in an obscene photograph published in your edition of August 29th, were shown partaking of an annual event in the town of Bunyol, where 120 tonnes of tomatoes were used as missiles against one another.
How many Africans would 120 tonnes of tomatoes feed? - Yours, etc.,
D.K. HENDERSON,
Castle Avenue,
Clontarf,
Dublin 3.