Why is there so much irrational opposition to genetically modified food?
“The United Nations Food & Agriculture Program has noted that global production of food, feed and fiber will need approximately to double by 2050 to meet the demands of a growing global population. Organizations opposed to modern plant breeding, with Greenpeace at their lead, have repeatedly denied these facts and opposed biotechnological innovations in agriculture. They have misrepresented their risks, benefits, and impacts, and supported the criminal destruction of approved field trials and research projects.
We urge Greenpeace and its supporters to re-examine the experience of farmers and consumers worldwide with crops and foods improved through biotechnology, recognize the findings of authoritative scientific bodies and regulatory agencies, and abandon their campaign against “GMOs” in general and Golden Rice in particular.”
This is the opening to a short, but powerful, letter signed by 110 Nobel Prize-winning scientists, almost all of whom earned their prizes in the fields of physics, chemistry or medicine.
In 2014, the Pew Research Center found an enormous gap between the public and scientists on this issue. Just 37 per cent of adults in the United States said genetically modified foods were safe to eat, while 88 per cent of scientists connected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science said the same.
It is time to look at the science and listen to reason. The world’s poor need GM foods.