Kitchen Garden Forum

big bit on the daily mail website today in respose to our environment secretary's views on gm in our food chain.


.http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -lies.html

What an appallingly ignorant and manipulative bit of ill-informed scaremongering.

Jonathon Jones (a GM scientist from John Innes Centre) puts it so concisely in his comment on the article:

Joanna Blythman's lack of knowledge on display here exceeds even that shown by her previous efforts. GM is a method, not a thing; every GM trait is different and solves a different problem. The Seralini and Pusztai studies were so poorly conducted they proved nothing, as agreed by all scientific societies that examined these reports. The herbicides used on soybean before their replacement by glyphosate were much more persistent and with greater mammalian toxicity. How would Joanna Blythman suggest we control weeds in soybeans? Bt insect resistant maize not only yields better when there is big pest pressure, but has lower levels of mycotoxins and so is safer to eat. Thanks to GM insect resistant cotton, 100s of thousands of tons of insecticide were never applied; now that that's keeping truly toxic chemicals out of the environment. Joanna- do some homework, and don't just talk to activists with antiGM axes to grind. Jonathan Jones, Norwich

Unfortunately trying to discuss GM with fundamentalist activists is about as fruitless as trying to discuss evolution with a fundamentalist creationist.

Whenever I see Blythman's name at the top of an article I quickly turn the page. I suggest everyone else does the same. I'm not in the least bit surprised to see her churning out this reactionary tosh for the Daily Mail. She used to be published in The Guardian who I would excuse for doing so for clearly having such an archly urbane editorship that they couldn't see the glaring flaws in most of her copy. I guess she must have been found out in the end.