Spoke today at a Royal Society for Medicine conference about food safety and food miles. There seemed to be widespread recognition that international trade cannot deliver food security and that the intensive nature of current food production and agriculture methods increase the risks posed by disease. Both an increasing number of experts and ordinary members of the public recognise that we need to focus on local, sustainable organic food. Yet the government’s latest offering is to champion the very opposite - genetic modification. Not only is this ecologically disastrous, it is also treating consumers like idiots who must surely have forgotten why they were so opposed to the technology last time round!
