C. Heartfield,
First, it has to be said that a company like Monsanto will certainly expose any number of people to any kind of danger if there's money in it. Fortunately, the idea of genetically modified crops scares people so much that the regulation had been quite tight. In fact the looseness that the scientific community now treats xenogenetic products with may itself be a product of those scare days. I had a friend who was a "plumber" (as geneticists liked to call themselves - "plumbing the inner workings of life" ) and he described some poor scientists at university in a field of GM strawberries that had two modified alleles. One was for a naturally occurring "anti-freeze" protein and the other created a lysine deficiency in the plant so that it could not survive without constant feeding including pure lysine. That was, and is, a standard precaution taken when modifying organisms in the laboratory so they don't get out. Anyway, here are these poor scientists in 95 degree heat walking around a New Jersey strawberry patch with full biohazard gear on to protect them from strawberries. Needless to say that by the end of the day the protective suits were wrapped around their waists and they were eating the strawberries by the handful.
The days of the full protective suits are gone because there have been no incidences that I know of where GM plants hurt anybody. That does not mean they don't pose subtle dangers. It's just that scientists have a real hard time being afraid of the things after all the hoopla came to nothing.
Now it is the public's turn to panic as the things darkly spoken about come out of the labs and into the fields. The climate of over-reaction is particularly acute and it has even clouded the judgment of scientific journalists. When maize, genetically modified to contain some naturally occurring pesticides, was found to spread some pesticide-containing pollen to surrounding milkweed, scientific journalists were alarmed at the deaths of the some monarch butterflies who use the milkweed and treated the discovery with the kind of soul-searching self-doubt scientists always have when an experiment goes wrong. Meanwhile, the point of introducing a pesticide into the genes of maize is clearly not to eliminate pesticides in the field. This is still the business of killing bugs, after all. The point is to reduce the *amount* of pesticide and to target it more specifically than, for example, a farmer dragging a sprayer behind his tractor. Clearly a crop-dusting airplane would do in the monarch butterflies far more completely when full-strength pesticide powder dropped onto their milkweed instead of GM pollen.
People's shock that the GM maize was killing some butterflies comes straight out of the misconception that nature is beneficent and benign. They are surprised, for some reason, that a natural pesticide kills bugs. Possibly they think it should just scare the bugs or gives them a tummyache. However, when you are a bug even getting scared or being made to have a tummyache is fatal because you don't eat properly. Getting pest insects not to eat properly is the entire point of pesticides. That GM Maize killed some monarch butterflies is bad. That species is under enough threat. However, one has to ask whether the butterflies would do even worse under a regime of sprayed pesticides. One needs also to wonder what other rare and precious but less glorious-looking creatures will be done in by a system that chooses pesticide spraying over the occasional drift of insect-hazardous pollen.
Of course there is the idea that farming could be done without pesticides. I think two things: First, that is a laudable but impractical goal. Even some organic farmers use natural pyrethrins and, again, these are pesticides just as surely as any others. Second, the cult of the small farmer - another "golden age" idiocy - is one of the things that has brought pesticides into such wide and irresponsible use. Small farmers can't take losses well. They lack economies of scale to ride out the lean times so they use any and all methods to increase yields. Large, industrial farms can handle losses, and therefore more regulation, because they have these economies of scale. This is true in any low-margin business. More importantly perhaps, large industrial farms are less sympathetic characters when they get weepy over new regulation. The pathos of a farm family looking on while their equipment is auctioned off after a bankruptcy has softened the hearts of many legislators otherwise enthusiastic to regulate.
If Britain and Europe don't want GM crops that's fine. Before claiming victory, however, they should take an account of what's won and lost. They should keep in mind that the story of 100-acre gentleman farmers selling organic apples and aubergines is not the story of agriculture. Agriculture is thousands and thousands of acres of grains and staples. Those thousands of acres attract and produce hordes of pest insects. Unless people get a taste for locusts and corn borers there will be a need to quell these insects en masse. You can't change biology. Food means bugs. An organic fruit grower may be able to lovingly flick away the caterpillars off each precious pear bound for Harrod's, but this method is impractical for a thousand acres of winter wheat. GM crops may be dangerous in some way. Shortages, bankruptcies and the present methods of agriculture are also dangerous. Bugs are dangerous. Life on the farm is no day at the beach.
peace