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[SANET-MG] franenstein lives



26/07/05 - Mail comment section  Daily Mail UK

Frankenstein comes to life

When the Mail launched its campaign against the introduction of GM crops - or Frankenstein foods - to Britain, triggering a huge political debate, we were accused by the Government of scaremongering.

Tony Blair, his eager accomplices in the scientific establishment and the (mainly American) GM conglomerates tried to ride roughshod over the public anxieties the Mail was articulating.

Month by month, year by year, the Mail stuck to its guns, sending reporters around the world to document the dangers posed by GM products and to prove that the claims made by their proponents were specious.

The public responded magnificently, boycotting GM products in their millions.

New Labour, for its part, continued to attack the Mail and launched a massively expensive PR blitz to persuade the foolish public of the error of their ways.

Today, with the nightmare emergence of a superweed in Britain, the Mail - though it gives us little pleasure to say so - stands utterly vindicated.

The Prime Minister has always insisted that any decision on GM crops should be based firmly on the scientific evidence. Just how much does he need?

Yesterday we learnt (via an obscure Government website, naturally) of a new herbicide-resistant weed.

Our countryside is now threatened by a superweed that requires more - not less - herbicide to control. How bitterly ironic.

Earlier trials showed that modified crops would decimate the populations of bees, butterflies, beetles and songbirds.

So the great mystery remains: why does Mr Blair stubbornly champion GM crops?

Is it because (doubtless prompted by Presidents Clinton and Bush) he is cravenly anxious to suck up to the huge US biotech corporations, regardless of the impact on this country?

Is it because the Science Minister Lord Sainsbury - who has invested a fortune in GM - is the driving force behind the policy and, as the donor of £13.5million to Labour, a hard man to ignore?

Or is it because Mr Blair's Director of Communications David Hill worked for GM giant Monsanto?

When the Mail coined the phrase Frankenstein foods, we could have been accused of hyperbole. Today, that accusation simply doesn't bear scrutiny.




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Find this story at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/newscomment.html?in_article_id=357081&in_page_id=1787
©2005 Associated New Media

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