Update on Plans for GM Crop Research in Britain

Last year I pointed out the complexities of arguments about GM food through the continuing debate in Europe and the U.K. about animal feed.  The diminishing availability of GM-free feed grain could lead to significant shortages, which in turn could drastically reduce the amount of meat in European markets.  (See "Re-Inventing The Food Chain (or "On Food Prices, In Vitro Meat, and GM Livestock Feed")."

Now the Independent reports that the U.K. is considering protecting GM crop research from domestic protest and attack.  The government may go so far as to bring that research onto defense installations in order to protect it better, as suggested by Andrew Grice in a story provocatively titled "Government to defy critics with secret GM crop trials".

Here is one 'graph from the article:

Professor Tim Benton, research dean at [the Leeds University] Faculty of Biological Science, said yesterday: "We need to find a way to do crop trials in a safe way and to minimise the environmental risk. We cannot carry on for the next 20 or 30 years saying it's too scary, the public is too frightened, it is politically too dangerous. There is absolutely no way we can move towards a world with food security without using GM technology. The amount of food we need could double because the population is growing, climate change will reduce yields and we will take land out of food production for biofuels."