Euan McColm: Ban on GM crops is embarrassing

Far from enhancing Scotland's 'clean, green status', Richard Lochheads ban on GM crops is a backward move. Picture: Julie Bull

Scottish Government’s populist move disrespects our scientists and lets down the country, writes Euan McColm

HOW can you tell if someone’s a Scottish scientist? After all, many of them take the form of normal humans. To the naked eye, a scientist may look just like you.

You could ask her, of course, but the problem is that you’d have to take the answer on trust. And scientists are not to be trusted, are they?

No, the only way to find out for sure whether a Scot is practising science is to throw her in a river. If she floats, she’s a scientist and can be dealt with appropriately.

If she sinks…well, the system’s not perfect but how else are we to stop these creatures, with their “chemicals” and their “laboratories”? Science is evil and no good can come of it.

Give thanks, then, for Scotland’s scientist-finder general, Richard Lochhead, cabinet secretary for rural affairs.

This great warrior against the scourge of progress recently struck a devastating blow against the practitioners of science, announcing a ban on the cultivation of genetically modified crops in Scotland.

Scottish plants are to be kept pure and Scottish, unsullied by the interferences of men and women who would dare to use human ingenuity for the good of mankind.

Naturally, Mr Lochhead did not base his decision on scientific evidence (there is no suggestion that GM crops pose any danger to us). Instead, his edict is entirely political in motivation; it’s cheap populism that exploits ignorance.

Yesterday, in response to the cabinet secretary’s decision on the issue, scientists revealed themselves to us.

An open letter to Mr Lochhead, signed by 28 research organisations, warns that the Scottish Government’s ban on the cultivation of all genetically modified crops, regardless of current or future scientific evidence about the benefits of particular applications, risks constraining Scotland’s contribution to scientific research and leaving the country without access to the sort of agricultural innovations that are, even now, making farming more sustainable elsewhere in the world.

The signatories – which include the Roslin Institute, cloners of the Godless abomination Dolly the sheep, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh – make clear their surprise and disappointment with the Government and point out that Scotland’s leadership in the field of science dates back to the 18th century and the Enlightenment.

Genetic modification of plants, the scientists write, has become a well established method and has a 20-year track record of safe use worldwide. What’s more, scientists are developing new plant breeding techniques that may be classified as GM in the future.

The letter concludes with the warning that the ban on GM crops in Scotland would prevent us from benefiting from future innovations in agriculture, fisheries, and healthcare.

Scaremongering about genetic modification has a proud history. Back in the 1990s, tabloid headlines screamed about “Frankenstein foods”. The implication was that crops with which scientists had meddled would be unsafe for humans.