Madam, - The ending of the EU's ban on genetically modified foods is a highly significant event, and I was glad to see you devote so much space to it in your edition of May 20th. However, I did find your coverage of the matter disappointingly bland.
Why are you so keen to reassure us? Genetic modification is not in the first instance a food safety matter (even if the claim that "test after test has shown it to be harmless" is highly disputable). It is much more an issue of biodiversity, as is evident from the increasing reports of escapes of modified stocks into landraces, and of damage to insect life from modified plants. It is also a huge political and economic issue, given the way in which it is concentrating increasing power over the world's food supplies in the hands of a small number of private corporations.
You reproduce the GM industry claim that "selective breeding of animals and plants does the same thing [as genetic modification\] but in a slower and far less targeted way". This is simply a lie - no length of time spent in selective breeding of desired traits is going to achieve the transfer of genetic materials from animals into vegetables, for example; nor does it include the use of viruses and antibiotics to "mark" those vegetables in which the genetic transfer has been successful.
The suggestion in your Editorial of May 21st that the EU is somehow to be congratulated for making the issue into one of consumer choice is superficial in the extreme. How are citizens to choose non-GM food, in a world in which traces of modified foods, particularly soya, can be found in almost every processed product - and in which it is going to be almost impossible for organic producers to protect their crops from cross-fertilisation by genetically modified crops growing in fields even at some distance from them? - Yours, etc.,
HILARY TOVEY, Tritonville Road, Sandymount, Dublin 4.