Give GM food a fair go

Issues magazine (Melbourne, September 2005)

The Case for Gene Technology
David Tribe, Department of Microbiology and Immunology,
University of Melbourne
Modern gene technology delivers safer and more nutritious food and deserves a fair hearing.

Lack of vitamin A promotes the death of about 6000 children per day, worldwide, from infectious disease. This is a tangible health hazard of vast scope that dwarfs any hypothetical hazard attributed to genetically modified (GM) foods. Recently an affluent Australian lawyer living in London told me that his social set shopped at the high class London chain Sainsbury’s for food but deliberately avoided buying GM food products because they are too “downmarket” as they are produced to meet the needs of desperately poor people in the developing world rather than for discerning people with high culinary standards.
It was only later that I realised that this incident neatly encapsulates the vastly different context of food safety and choices available in the richer developed world compared with the poorer developing world. In the developed world consumers have the luxury of worrying about hypothetical fears while people suffer and die in the developing world from very real food hazards that are preventable by better technology. Satisfying the concerns of wealthy western Europeans about hypothetical food hazards can interfere with the provision of better nutrition for the rural poor in countries like India, Brazil and Bangladesh...Continues at Issues magazine.