The Prince of Wales was accused of launching an ignorant rant about
genetically modified crops last night after claiming that the technology
would cause ?the biggest environmental disaster of all time? and lead to ?no
food in the future?.
The Prince?s comments, in which he blamed GM food and modern agriculture for
environmental and social problems such as climate change and food shortages,
were described by leading scientists as ?shockingly ill-informed?.

Plant researchers said that he had completely misunderstood the benefits and
risks of GM crops, which the Prince labelled a ?gigantic experiment with
nature and the whole of humanity that has gone seriously wrong?. They also
ridiculed his contention that agricultural biotechnology was contributing to
major challenges such as global warming.

Mike Childs, campaigns director of Friends of the Earth, defended the Prince?s
comments, however, saying that GM crops had been exaggerated as a potential
weapon against world hunger. Prince Charles, a long-time critic of GM crops
who accused scientists a decade ago of meddling in ?realms that belong to
God and God alone?, made his comments in an interview with The Daily
Telegraph.

Though the Government, plant scientists and industry are promoting GM crops
as part of the solution to global food shortages, the Prince said that
biotechnology had already proved itself a dangerous failure. ?Why else do
you think we are facing all these challenges, climate change and
everything?? he said.

The role of ?gigantic corporations? in food production was leading humanity
towards ?absolute disaster?, driving small farmers off their land into
?unsustainable, unmanageable, degraded and dysfunctional conurbations of
unimaginable awfulness?. Today?s agriculture was ?the classic way of
ensuring that there is no food in the future?, he said.

Food shortages and rising prices should be addressed not by raising
production with high-tech crops that boosted yields, but by adopting methods
of farming that were more in tune with nature.

?What we should be talking about is food security, not food production -
that is what matters and that is what people will not understand. And if
they think it?s somehow going to work because they are going to have one
form of clever genetic engineering after another then again count me out,
because that will be guaranteed to cause the biggest environmental disaster
of all time.?
www.checkbiotech.org