New MCFly volunteer Philip James gives his thought on a GM food debate held on Tuesday 13th March and jointly hosted by the British Council and the British Science Association.

Warning: This article contains a banquet of food-related puns.

The speakers at the debate were David Hall-Matthews (University of Leeds), Christine Foyer (University of Leeds), Kidist Kibret (University of Nottingham)

Ironically, unnecessary technology was applied in an attempt to improve this debate on GM crops when the traditional methods, correctly applied, would have worked just fine. Despite being no more than 25 strong the audience was still asked to plough through the process of submitting our initial opinions on GM via text and twitter!

However, the (as usual overly long) opening monologues did raise some interesting points that, like some juicey FlavorSaver tomatoes, the audience were itching to get their teeth into:
Are famines a failure of politics rather than agriculture;
why don’t democracies have famines;
will a world of 9 billion racked by climate change need GM to survive;
and where can I get a soyabean that isn’t GM?
There was even a useful breakout session where you could bond with a stranger by discussing how hopeless everything was whilst eating a biscuit.

But the debate itself was stifled by format of having to write down your questions and sit in silence as the moderator and panellist man- and woman- fully scythed them down one by one; a device akin to the terminator genes inserted into GM crops to prevent any potentially dangerous interaction.

The debate, such as it was, occasionally laboured in the tired furrows of ‘GM crops will save the world’ vs. health risks, superweeds and the rest.’ But light was shone on fresh and fertile ground, such as how the EU’s attitude on GM, as a key export market, affects Africa’s ability to choose or reject it; how the irresilience of the developed nations’ crops impacts on the global food system (droughts in Australia were highlighted as contributing to the 07/08 food price spike); the possible unintended consequences of the success of GM, by forcing down prices, on the viability of small farmers; and the need to insure subsistence farmers against failure to allow them to innovate, with or without GM. All of which was good food for thought.

[The MCFly editors would like to apologise for the puns here. But we can’t, because we thought they were really funny. Pun-ishment is no crime!]