Archived press release

National debate rejects GM food and crops

24 September 2003

The public doesn't want GM food and doesn't want the Government to allow GM crops to be commercially grown in the UK. This is the overwhelming conclusion from today's report on the Government-sponsored national GM debate, GM Nation? Friends of the Earth today challenged the Government to listen to the findings and rule out GM commercialization in the UK.

The report's seven 'key messages' are brief and to the point:

1. "People are generally uneasy about GM;
2. The more people engage in GM issues, the harder their attitudes and more intense their concerns;
3. There is little support for early commercialisation;
4. There is widespread mistrust of government and multi-national companies;
5. There is broad desire to know more and for more research to be done;
6. Developing countries have special interests;
7. The debate was welcomed and valued."

GM Nation encouraged people to fill in a questionnaire, and 36,557 forms were returned. More than half (54 per cent) said they never want to see GM crops grown in the UK. A further 18 per cent would find GM crops acceptable only if there was no risk of cross-contamination, and 13 per cent wanted more research before any decision was made. A mere two per cent said that GM crops were acceptable "in any circumstances" and only eight per cent were happy to eat GM food (86 per cent were not).

The debate organisers also conducted a series of separate interviews with groups of people, representative of the general population, who didn't take part in GM Nation?, to see if there was a "silent majority" with different views from those taking part in the debate. The results of this "Narrow But Deep" research "suggested that when people in the general population become more engaged in GM issues, and choose to discover more about them, they harden their attitudes to GM". This included "more concern/ greater unease about all the risks most frequently associated with GM. In particular, the more they choose to discover about GM, the more convinced they are that no one knows enough about the long-term effects of GM on human health."

Friends of the Earth's GM campaigner Pete Riley said:

"The Government will ignore this report at its peril. The public has made it clear that it doesn't want GM food and it doesn't want GM crops. There must not be any more weasel words from the Government on this issue. It must stand up to US and corporate lobbying, honour the findings of its own consultation, and rule out the commercialisation of GM crops."

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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust