The former chief scientific advisor to the Scottish Government, professor Muffy Calder, claims its decision to ban the growing of GM crops will have “apocalyptic” consequences for country.
Scotland’s rural affair secretary, Richard Lochead, announced the ban on August 9, commenting that the commercial growing of GM crops would “damage our clean and green brand, thereby gambling with the future of our £14billion food and drink industry.”
Professor Calder hit out at the move, claiming the decision was not based on scientific evidence. She said that key Scottish crops could be expose to diseases which “could come and wipe us out” – adding that she “meant it in apocalyptic sense”.
But the Soil Association’s policy director Peter Melchett has called her comments “extraordinarily inaccurate and unscientific”. He told The Scotsman: “(Professor Calder) says that ‘everyone knows that there are diseases, there are blights that can affect crops’ but she does not acknowledge that after 30 years of developing GM crops, there is no disease-resistant crop commercially available. GM blight-resistant potatoes, presumably what Professor Calder had in mind, are being developed, but of course there are new non-GM varieties of potato which deliver significant blight resistance and which have been available for some years.
“Professor Calder also displays her lack of expertise by saying that for GM crops ‘you have to use less pesticide’. It is true that insecticide and herbicide use in the USA initially dropped when GM crops were introduced, but it is also the case, based on US government data, that the overall use of pesticides on GM crops is now higher than on non-GM crops.”
