Update: Protest group Take the Flour Back has responded to the Rothamsted researchers with its own open letter, spelling out its concerns and insisting it will press ahead with its protest unless the trial crop is voluntarily destroyed.
Original article posted on 2 May 2012
A direct action group called Take the Flour Back is planning to target a plot where a new strain of wheat is being trialled. This threat of mass action, which could ruin the work of researchers at the agricultural science centre at Rothamsted in the UK, is not the first time GM crop experiments have been targeted. While stopping such protest is difficult – and we would not wish to see force used to do so – it is worth appealing to the consciences of those who may be hoping to end the experiment and ask them to reconsider before it is too late, and before years of work to which we have devoted our lives are gone forever.
Just like environmentalists, I agree that agriculture should seek to work “with nature rather than against it”. This motivation underlies our work. We have developed a variety of wheat which doesn’t need to be sprayed with insecticides. Instead, we have identified a way of getting the plant to repel aphids, using a natural process that has evolved in mint and many other plants – and simply added it to the wheat genome so that it can do the same thing.
Our GM wheat could substantially reduce the use of agricultural chemicals for future generations.
Are groups like Take the Flour Back really against this? Or are they simply against it because it is “GMO”, therefore they believe it is unnatural in some way?
Remember – all plants in all types of agriculture are genetically modified to serve humanity’s needs. The (E)-β-farnesene compound produced by our wheat to deter pests is already found in more than 400 species of plant, many of which are consumed as food and drink on a daily basis (including the hops used in beer, to give just one example).
To suggest that we have used a cow gene and that our wheat is somehow part-cow betrays a misunderstanding which may serve to confuse people or scare them but has no basis in scientific reality.
Those who might seek to destroy our work seem to think, even before we have had a chance to test it, that our new wheat variety is bad.
How? Clearly it is not through scientific enquiry, as the tests have not yet been performed. On its website Take the Flour Back states: “There is serious doubt that the aphid alarm pheromone as found in this GM crop would even work.” That could be right – but if our test is destroyed, no one will ever know. Is that what protesters want?
Our research is trying to shed light on questions about the safety and usefulness of new varieties of the staple food crops on which all of us depend. Activists might prefer never to know whether our new wheat variety would work, but we believe they are in a minority – in a democratic society most people value factual knowledge and they understand that it is necessary for sensible decision making.
Take the Flour Back has described genetically modified crops as “not properly tested”. Yet when tests are carried out protesters plan to destroy them before any useful information can be obtained. We don’t see how preventing the acquisition of knowledge is a defensible position in an age of reason. What such groups are planning to do is reminiscent of clearing books from a library because you wish to stop other people discovering their contents. Such actions do not have a proud tradition.
Our work is publically funded, we have pledged that our results will not be patented and will not be owned by any private company – if our wheat proves to be beneficial we want it to be available to farmers around the world at minimum cost. If publicly funded research is destroyed, it will result in a situation where only the big corporations can afford the drastic security precautions needed to continue biotechnology research – therefore promoting a situation protesters say they are trying to avoid.
I end with a further concern. Activists may not know much about Rothamsted. The institute is the site of perhaps the longest-running environmental experiment in the world, with plots testing different agricultural methods and their ecological consequences dating all the way back to 1843. Some of these plots are very close to the GM wheat test site, and we are extremely worried that anyone walking onto them would endanger a research programme that is almost two centuries old.
But we also see our newest tests as part of this unbroken line – research never ends, and technology can never (nor should be) frozen in time, as implied by the term “GM freeze”. Society didn’t stop with the horse-drawn plough because of fears that the tractor was “unnatural”. We didn’t refuse to develop better wheat varieties in the past – which keep us well-fed today – simply because they differed from what went before and were therefore scary.
The wheat consumed today has been subject to many genetic changes – to make plants produce more grain, resist disease, avoid growing too tall and blowing over in the wind, be suitable for different uses like pasta and bread, provide more nutrition and grow at the right time for farming seasons.
These agricultural developments make it possible for the same amount of food to be produced from a smaller area of land, meaning farmers convert less wildlands to agriculture. Surely we should work together in this?
When protesters visit Rothamsted on 27 May we will be available to meet and talk to them. We would welcome the chance to show our work and explain why we think it could benefit the environment in the future. But we ask that activists respect the need to gather knowledge unimpeded, and not come to damage and destroy.
As scientists we know only too well that we don’t have all the answers. That’s why we conduct experiments. And that is why those opposed to such trials must not destroy them.
Profile: John Pickett is the Michael Elliott distinguished research fellow and scientific leader of chemical ecology at Rothamsted Research. This article is based on an open letter co-signed by colleagues Toby Bruce, Gia Aradottir, Huw Jones, Lesley Smart, Janet Martin and Johnathan Napier