Why the GMO debate is taking a new turn in the UK

Remarkable shifts have occurred in the GMOs debate since the beginning of 2013. GM crops found new advocacy. In the meantime, the opposition remains strong and do not hesitate to undermine the technical interest of GMOs for agriculture along with insisting on health risks.

Would British people mind eating GMOs? The answer to such a question is most definitely yes. In January 2013, the UK Food Standard Agency made out that 67% of the public wish a food product to be labelled if it comes from an animal that was fed with GM plants. Whereas the public remains highly suspicious towards GMOs consumption, the government gave sign of sympathy to GM technology.

A shift has been occurring in the United Kingdom regarding the debate on GMOs. In January 2013, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affaires Owen Paterson promoted genetically modified food. During a speech at the Oxford Farming Conference he insisted on the many interests of GMO and claimed the government owed “a duty to the public to reassure them that it is a safe and beneficial innovation”.

Coming from Owen Paterson, such a statement is not a big surprise. The Secretary was already famous for calling British consumers opposition to GM food a “complete nonsense”. What is surprising however is that Mark Lynas, one of the earliest anti-GM food campaigners, expressed a favourable opinion along with Owen Paterson. “My conclusion is very clear”, said Mark Lynas at Oxford Farming Conference’s attendance, “the GM debate is over. It is finished. […] over a decade and a half with three trillion GM meals eaten there has never been a single substantiated case of harm”.

The government seems to have taken a pro GMO stand that even former opposition representatives will follow. But is the british market willing or even ready to accept GMOs in the shelves of its supermarkets? Judging by the reaction the Oxford Farming Conference triggered, nothing could be less certain.

Such a twist in the british GM debate was not likely to go unnoticed. British citizen remain mostly opposed to GM food consumption. Anti-GMO organisations know it and pointed out again very well as a reaction to the Secretary of State’s speech at Oxford. The Economist for instance reminded its reader of a poll published by the British Science Association in March 2012 which showed that “the share of people expressing some level of concern about GM foods had fallen, but only by five points from 2003 to 2012, to 47%”. It looks very much like GMOs harmlessness remains to be proven to British.

Why is there such a gap between people’s feeling and the government’s ideas? According to GeneWatch UK, private interests are clearly interfering with the regular course of politics regarding GMOs in the UK. “It is clear that ministers have done a dodgy deal with the GM industry to promote GM crops in Britain” said GeneWatch UK’s Director, Helen Wallace. As early as the 4^th of January 2013, GeneWatch UK points out that “All-Party Parliamentary Group on Science and Technology in Agriculture is being used by Monsanto and other GM companies to lobby on behalf of their business interests”.

GM industry might very well try to convince of the usefulness of their products. Beyond lobbying consideration, the recent twist in the debate about GMOs however seems to have raised a new fundamental question. On one side, some leaders argue that GM crops will help farmers staying competitive. Such crops might indeed help them grow food in spite of very harsh conditions like the ones british agriculture faced in 2012. On the other side, organisations like the Soil Association that opposes GM crops claim that only diversifying cultures and methods will enable farmers’ businesses to go unarmed through extreme environmental shifts. In that scope of analysis, highly specific GMO’s are everything but a good solution for national agriculture.

It is therefore hard to say where the current debate will takes us and why. However, nobody can deny today that something has changed in the way the debate was held both in its form and its substance. Mark Lynas might very well think the GM debate is over, but in many regards the topic has not been so hot in many years.