The first time I remember hearing about GM foods was in 1994 or 5. I remember this because I was at work at the time, and I left that job in June 1995. Greenpeace (or was it Friends of the Earth?) had referred to GM foods at “frankenstein foods”. A big outcry followed, with pro-GM people saying the term was sensationalist and unscientific. It drew my attention to the issue. I wasn’t sure what to think at the time.
A few years later, in the late 1990s, I was watching TV. There was a five-minute programme on around 9pm where someone in the public eye would present some of their opinions. That evening’s episode was by the TV gardener Alan Titchmarsh, and the title of the programme was “What if a rose had no thorns?” The title intrigued me and I was looking forward to the programme.
But just as it was about to start, there was an announcement that the programme had been cancelled.
I’ve no idea why it was cancelled, but after that I felt even more intrigued, wondering what Alan Titchmarsh might have been planning to say.
The title kept playing on my mind - I wondered, “What would happen if a rose had no thorns? What purpose do the thorns serve? Would it make roses vulnerable to certain predators? Would roses have survived without thorns? Would they die out if thorns were somehow removed?”
From then on I started being increasingly concerned about GM foods. I felt that tampering with nature in this way could lead to unforeseen and unexpected consequences. I didn’t think any good could come of it - and maybe more importantly, I didn’t see the need for it.
The pro-GM lobby suggested that GM foods would end world poverty. I felt very sceptical about that.
And I certainly wasn’t the only one.
Around 1999, I went to a public meeting to discuss the issue. I was surprised at the number of scientists and farmers in attendance, many of them speaking quite eloquently against the introduction of GM foods to the UK. I remember that Tony Blair was a supporter of GM foods, and I already disliked him, years before the Iraq War.
I started buying organic, feeling it was the only way I could have any control over what I was eating.
Again, I wasn’t the only one who felt this way. The media started reporting on the surprising increase in the popularity of organic food. At the time there was a lot of division over the issue - people who didn’t want to eat GM foods were described as “unscientific”.
But organic food sales kept rising. I started buying most of my food from a local health shop.
Again, I don’t think I was the only one.
Suddenly there was an astonishing announcement from Sainsbury’s, one of the UK’s “Big Four” supermarkets. Sainsbury’s announced that it had successfully eliminated all GM ingredients from its own-brand products.
Other supermarkets soon followed suit, some of them in other European countries.
Consumer pressure had trumped political power.
EU legislation followed, with tighter controls over food labelling and traceability.
Since that time, food protection developments seem to me like a kind of cat and mouse game, with corporate lobbyists looking for loopholes or trying different approaches to bend the public will.
But ultimately, this episode shows who really has the power in such situations.
We do
- ordinary people - as long as we are prepared to use it.
In order for that to be the case, we need to be awake and alert to what is happening, and never allow ourselves to be gaslit into thinking we are powerless.