Prince Charles warns of environmental disaster with GMOs

Great Britain’s Prince Charles recently warned that companies developing genetically modified crops risk creating the biggest environmental disaster of all time.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, the Prince of Wales strongly denounced the development of GM crops, accusing biotech companies of conducting a “gigantic experiment I think with nature and the whole of humanity which has gone seriously wrong.”

“Why else are we facing all these challenges, climate change and everything?”

Prince Charles also said that relying on “gigantic corporations” to mass produce food would result in “absolute disaster.”

“That would be the absolute destruction of everything... and the classic way of ensuring there is no food in the future,” he said.

“What we should be talking about is food security not food production—that is what matters and that is what people will not understand.

“And if they think it’s somehow going to work because they are going to have one form of clever genetic engineering after another, then again count me out, because that will be guaranteed to cause the biggest disaster environmentally of all time.”

Small farmers, in particular, would be the victims of “gigantic corporations” taking over the mass production of food.

“I think it’s heading for real disaster,” he said.

“If they think this is the way to go....we [will] end up with millions of small farmers all over the world being driven off their land into unsustainable, unmanageable, degraded and dysfunctional conurbations of unmentionable awfulness.”

The Prince, who has an organic farm on his Highgrove estate, argued for more sustainable agriculture methods. “It’s not going backwards. It is actually recognizing that we are with nature, not against it. We have gone working against nature for too long.”

He pointed to the environmental problems in India caused by the Green Revolution.

“It worked for a short time but now the price is being paid.

“I have been to the Punjab where you have seen the disasters that have taken place as result of the over demand on irrigation because of the hybrid seeds and grains that have been produced which demand huge amounts of water.

“[The] water table has disappeared. They have huge problems with water level, with pesticide problems, and complications which are now coming home to roost.”

The Prince’s comments come at a critical time, as there is intense pressure to develop more GM crops because of the world food crisis, despite the fact that GM crops have not been shown to produce more food.

(Source: Daily Telegraph)

© Copyright September 2008, The Organic & Non-GMO Report