(via Jonathan Harrington).
 
It istime we got tough with the Green Luddites who disrupt genetically-modified crop trials. A trial into GM potatoes organised by Leeds University is the latest to be vandalised.

By any sensible standard, this is criminal damage. The people responsible should be jailed, and kept in jail until there is a guarantee of their future and behaviour. No doubt they feel superior to the yobs who cause trouble on the streets but in fact they are no better.

These people are experts in producing scare stories that alarm local people unnecessarily, by creating hysteria about alleged contamination.

Publishing full details of forthcoming trials in advance plays into their hands. Farmers taking part in the trials have been intimidated and threatened.

They even dress up in Frankenstein masks for the TV cameras and
predict all kinds of disaster. Their invention of the term "Frankenstein foods" is a masterstroke of lying propaganda.

Their sabotage has inflicted immeasurable damage on any attempt to investigate the facts about GM food. They would rather vandalise crops than let experiments give the answer about their safety. They are probably costing this country billions by their nihilism.

Benefits claimed for GM crops include increases in yields, reduction in pesticide use and reduced soil erosion.

The first major GM crop with direct consumer benefits, low-saturated-fat soya beans has been on sale in the US for nearly 10 years.

GM foods and crops have been grown and eaten for many years without even a hint of health problems. They are the most tightly regulated crops there have ever been, with nearly 100m acres of GM crops in the US alone. But ignorance about them makes people vulnerable to claptrap from anti-GM propagandists. The obvious answer is to run organised tests and the Luddites should be slapped down when they disrupt them.

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