Subj: London Times - Britain should be GM-free, says Prince
Date: 03-07-31 17:01:32 EDT
From: [log in to unmask] (NLP Wessex)
To: UndisclosedRecipients
London Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-2-762240,00.html
July 31, 2003
Britain should be GM-free, says Prince
By Valerie Elliott, Countryside Editor
THE Prince of Wales has said that he wants a ban on genetically modified
crops.
During a visit to Cardiff he said: “We need a GM-free Wales — and a GM-free
Britain, for that matter.”
He also revealed irritation with remarks by Franz Fischler, the European
Union’s Agriculture Commissioner, who said last week that any attempts for
areas to declare themselves GM-free were illegal. The Prince’s reaction was
blunt: “It’s ridiculous.”
A report is to be sent to ministers in September before a decision is made
on the commercial planting of GM crops.
The Prince’s comments were made in what his aides last night described as a
“private conversation” with a journalist from The Western Mail. A
spokeswoman at St James’s Palace said: “It appears to have been an
aspirational remark on the lines of, ‘I wish’, rather than a political
pronouncement.”
Peter Lundgren, a board member of the radical new farming organisation
“farm”, said in response to the Prince’s comment: “Apart from the GM
companies and the American Administration, who is pushing the
commercialisation of GM crops? The public won’t buy them. The supermarkets
won’t stock them. There are no overriding economic incentives, scientific
risks to health and the environment remain unanswered, coexistence is
impossible.”
A spokeswoman for the Agriculture Biotechnology Council, which represents
the main GM companies, said: “Perhaps the Prince of Wales might talk to some
UK farmers involved in GM farm trials who are already anticipating using the
benefits of this technology commercially in the UK.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
To view the Sierra Club List Terms & Conditions, see:
http://www.sierraclub.org/lists/terms.asp
|
