GM food saboteurs only destroy vital new knowledge | Howard Atkinson

I have seen first-hand how GM activism holds back crucial progress in how the UK and developing world feed themselvesI read with particular interest the open letter by Rothamsted Research to a group of activists intending to destroy Rothamsted's GM field trial to control aphids. If the trial is destroyed it will be almost exactly four years since one of our publicly funded trials at the University of Leeds was also destroyed.That trial was to test plants made resistant to nematodes, microscopic worm-like pests that cause an estimated $118bn annual losses to world crops. Like the Rothamsted trial it had no company involvement. One aim was to establish a future approach for UK agriculture. We also wished to evaluate the general value of the technology before donating it for development by public scientists in sub-Saharan Africa, where over 50% of the banana yields are lost to nematodes. The uprooting of...

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