Bayer CropScience spokesman Dr Julian Little told BBC News Online that the government's decision giving a tentative go-ahead to GM commercialisation was "symbolic" and made "in the face of a lot of hostility". But he added the decision had put several new regulatory hurdles in the way of commercialisation. "These were ill-defined in the sense that we didn't know what they entailed. The timeline was open-ended to the point that it was clear we were unlikely to get commercialisation of this product before 2006-2007," Dr Little explained.So, effectively, GM crops have been shelved in the UK due to public rejection and resulting regulation... but I suppose Dr. Julian really meant to say that this was very different from the ill-defined and uncertain nature of GM crop safety.
There are few better examples of democratic, shopping-with-your dollar than the rejection of GM crops in Europe. Don't get me wrong. I am not a Frankenfood fear-monger. I am much more in favour of selective GM crops with the insecticides built in, for example, than I am spraying. I lived in a valley in PEI where the McFries were sprayed more than once a week through the summer. Our immediate neighbours grew soy for their cattle so they didn't get sprayed - go figure. But, and it is a big but, the usurpation of science by both sides (but primarily by corporate interests of some sort - whether the chemical co or the interest group) has coloured fact with opinion to the point anything is arguable, even the plainly and factually unsustainable. The fame mind-set that worries about Frankenfood denies global warming. But if the people, the customers decide they don't buy the available information, the lack of facts, they then should...not buy it. It should be a neo-con's dream, the marketplace actually making a decision. I am sure it isn't.
I think I miss my strictly cow-poo enhanced, personally roto-tilled garden, where I squashed the potato beetles by hand...
