Noel Kingsbury is a horticulturalist and writer. His latest
book, Hybrid: The History and Science of Plant Breeding, will be
published in October by Chicago University Press. People are
simply not objective or “rational” when it comes to what science
they believe, as illustrated by the different attitudes to GM in
the US and in Europe. It has been the misfortune of GM
technology to have arrived at a time when there is such distrust
of science and the wholesale privatization of the crop-breeding
industry (it used to be largely state-owned in the US, the UK,
and many other European countries). Most of those who oppose GM
crops have failed to separate the two sides of the issue: the
control of the technology by corporations and the
safety/environmental aspects. During the 1980s mega-corporations
like Monsanto, with no history of plant breeding, took over the
business and promoting of GM crops. But the technology does not
have to be controlled by the likes of Monsanto. One of the
biggest investors in GM is the Ch