Source: BBC Radio 5 Live
URL: N/A
Date: 12/11/2014
Event: Vivienne Westwood to those unable to buy organic: "Eat less"
Credit: BBC Radio 5 Live
People:
Sarah Brett: A letter representing 57 million anti-GM campaigners has been delivered to Downing Street by a delegation that included the fashion designer Vivienne Westwood.
Dan Walker: The letter, which is signed by the likes of Susan Sarandon, Jeremy Irons, Daryl Hannah, is from American citizens to us, the British people. It outlines the concerns that they have about the impact GM crops are having on the environment.
Sarah Brett: Vivienne Westwood and the Labour MP Michael Meacher were among the group that delivered the letter to No. 10, where they spoke to 5 Live's Dino Sofos.
Vivienne Westwood: I am an activist and my experience talking to people - people are so pleased when you tell them you're against all these things, because they're with you, and this is not reflected in the press. And, generally speaking, we need to change to a green economy and a green world. And that is easy to do. The alternative is hell.
Dino Sofos: There'll be some people who are listening, and they think: here's a lady who's very successful, very wealthy in her own right, and they wouldn't begrudge you of that at all, but they would say "Look, you know, the reason we're talking about GM crops is because there's a global food shortage, a crisis", and they think crops like these will increase the yield of food production. You know, it'll bring the price of food down, it will help people who need food like this. This is just somebody who doesn't have to worry about these problems, therefore she can afford to be a campaigner on these issues.
Vivienne Westwood: Mm, well, the first thing I would say to people is: follow what Russell Brand said - he's got a rule of thumb. If the government said it's good, then you know it's not. I mean, most people agree with this. You know, they really do, they know what the government are up to. It's just: everything they say is rubbish and everything they do is dangerous. And so, what I'm saying there is that there is an awful lot of opinion and experience that tells us that, that the big companies - agribusiness - are absolutely destroying the Earth, they are siphoning off profits, they're putting farmers into debt to try to pay all these processes - sucking off the profits, the ground is turning to sand - I mean, it's short-term profit for monopolies. It's not going to solve the world problem - we know very well that the most efficient form of feeding the world is through what's good for the planet is good for people.
Dino Sofos: Michael Meacher's behind you. And Michael - obviously, Labour MP - Michael, this is something that Common Agricultural Policy has a huge effect on what happens, GM crops in this country - basically, we can't do anything without EU approval. If the EU does give the green light for GM crops to be produced, there's nothing effectively that we can do about it in this country.
Michael Meacher: Well, first of all, until now the EU has prohibited any significant development of GM. The problem is that certain countries are adamantly opposed and will remain very strongly opposed - Greece, Italy, Germany, etc - the UK, because of the influence of US government, has always been much more favourable towards GM. What makes us so very angry about this, of course, is it's never been properly tested, and if you have a referendum on "Are you willing to allow the food supply to be contaminated with the GM effect on your - on the food that you eat?", I am sure that there would be a very large majority in this country who'd say "Don't do it". If you ask people, the vast majority of people want organic food which is free of any chemicals -
Dino Sofos: Not everybody can afford organic food.
Michael Meacher: Well, it is very -
Vivienne Westwood: Eat less.
Michael Meacher [laughs]: There is a slight premium, that is true, and that does make it more difficult for poorer people to take advantage of it. But that shouldn't stand in the way.
Dino Sofos: I mean, Dame Vivienne interjected there and said "Eat less", which is one argument. But I mean, there are people in this country who are going to food banks, you know, they don't have enough food to put on their table, so "Eat less" isn't an option. I mean, they've got virtually nothing, so this might be an answer.
Vivienne Westwood: I know, they don't have any choice, this is the point, isn't it. And you've got all these processed food, which is the main reason people are getting fat. They're not actually good for you, they just don't give you strength, they give you weight. I mean, I eat vegetables and fruit, and I don't eat meat, I believe meat is bad for me, I don't eat it. It's also bad for the animals. But if - if there was a movement to produce more organic food and less of the horrible food, then organic food would obviously be a right, a good value price, wouldn't it.
Dan Walker: What do you make of that? That was the designer Vivienne Westwood and Labour MP Michael Meacher speaking to 5 Live's Dino Sofos. We're going to continue our conversation -
Sarah Brett: Would you be prepared to "eat less"? As Vivienne says.
Dan Walker: Yeah - it's fascinating, isn't it. And Liz O'Neill is here with us, who describes herself as a GM sceptic - I'm not sure Liz would agree with everything that Vivienne was saying, we'll get to that in a moment. And she's from the campaign group GM Freeze, and Professor Jonathan Jones is also on 5 Live with us today, he's from the Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich. Liz, first off - why are you sceptical about GM food?
Liz O'Neill: Well, I think there's a number of issues. What we need to be very clear on is that the crops, the GM crops that are in the ground today are causing enormous environmental damage. There's that on the one hand, there's socio-economic factors - one of the greatest concerns for me personally, and for GM Freeze, is patenting, we just don't think it's right that anyone should own the DNA of the plants that feed us, you know, that's the most moral perspective for me. There are issues around health, I mean there are certainly unanswered questions -
Sarah Brett: Nothing conclusive, though, is there. That's the issue.
Liz O'Neill: Absolutely not, there are unanswered questions, and one of the reasons for that is that studies don't get followed up. But to be honest, I think, you know, we're often given this kind of false dichotomy between, you know, um, GM or organic and, you know, that it's either safe or it's going to kill us, as if that's all that this is about. I think one of the biggest things we need to do is broaden the discussion out, look at the environmental impacts, the social impacts and the broader ethical perspective.
Sarah Brett: Okay. Jonathan, what's your view?
Jonathan Jones: Well, the real problem is people talk about GM as if it's just one thing. In fact, GM is a method, a method of putting DNA in - of putting a few genes into a plant that already carries tens of thousands of genes. And hundreds of different GM plants have been made, with different kinds of purposes. So there's just a couple of ones that have been - dominate agriculture, there's the insect-resistant maize and there's the -
Sarah Brett: Wheat.
Jonathan Jones: - herbicide-resistant maize. But the real question is not, you know, "Should we have GM or not?", it's rather "What kind of agriculture do we want?" And so, you know, we all need to think about this and care about it - agriculture faces big problems. We always have to control weeds, pests and diseases - we can't say what's an ideal way to control weeds, we have to ask ourselves "What is the least bad way to control weeds?"
Liz O'Neill: But... I think we can say -
Jonathan Jones: For example, just to finish at this point, so Roundup Ready soybeans - it's not like there was a magical world before Roundup Ready soybeans where no herbicides were used -
Liz O'Neill: No, but the herbicides -
Jonathan Jones: - before GM soy, there was Chloramden, Metribuzin, Trifluralin and Pendimethalin, and others. And these are much nastier and more persistent -
Liz O'Neill: Yes, and they're, and they're not being used now, the world moves on, we learn that things are bad, you know, are causing damage and we stop using them. We had farm-scale evaluations in the UK. We tried this out with the crops, the same kind of crops as in America, the same kind of crops that people are trying to bring into the UK now, and it caused damage, induced -
Jonathan Jones: What caused damage was herbicides, so -
Liz O'Neill: Yes! And that's -
Jonathan Jones: - what they discovered was that weedkillers kill weeds. And that there's less weeds for the insects, and there's less insects -
Liz O'Neill: But that's - that's what GM's all about!
Jonathan Jones: But farmers have to control weeds. So what you're saying is it's a bad thing to control weeds properly -
Liz O'Neill: It's a bad thing to - it's a bad thing to over-
Jonathan Jones: - you'd rather they incompetently control weeds. With less - with more persistent chemicals.
Liz O'Neill: So... I'm sorry, you're saying that organic farming is incompetent? I think that controlling weeds in a way that works with nature, that is, you know - doesn't completely change the chemical formation of the soil, that doesn't actually lead to insecticide-resistant weeds emerging. There are - there many ways to control weeds - of course, if we want to farm in a way that's economical, we have to control what people would define as weeds - that doesn't mean we have to kill every single species other than the thing that we are going to eat. We want pollinators, for goodness sake, we've already -
Jonathan Jones: Sure.
Liz O'Neill: - seen a 90% decline in the monarch butterfly. Do you want to see no bees?
Jonathan Jones: Of course not.
Liz O'Neill: Well then, you need to have weeds, that's what bees live on - you can't say "We need to get rid of all the weeds", it's ridiculous, of course you need to manage but you need to manage in a constructive way that works with nature. You know, agro-ecological approaches are extremely successful, and I have to go back to this idea that, you know, "GM is a method, not a thing" - yes of course GM is, but the point is that the actual reality of the GM that's in fields is that it is those three or four individual crops, and they're doing damage. To defend -
Jonathan Jones: Well, I think we are having the right conversation here, which is what kind of agriculture we want. I mean, I think it is important -
Liz O'Neill: Yes! And I want agro-ecological...
Jonathan Jones: Yes, okay. The problem is that yields are usually lower, on average - organic yields are half that of conventional agriculture, and the real damage we cause to the environment is by ploughing it up and replacing biodiversity with fields. So if you've got half the yield, you need twice the land - we don't have twice the land.
Liz O'Neill: Sorry, that is not - that's a bogus way to look at the statistics.
Jonathan Jones: I don't think so.
Liz O'Neill: Organic farming is extremely successful, and agro-ecological approaches feed the majority of the world's population - 70% of food is produced on small-scale farms. It's only us in the west -
Jonathan Jones: Well, why are billions of people hungry?
Liz O'Neill: People are hungry because of politics - we currently produce, in the world, twice as much food as we need to feed the entire population - people are hungry because it's not shared out equally. This argument really gets to me, you know, that you have to have GM or people are going to starve - people are starving because of politics, and it - people, you know, who call and defend their own particular area of work - I mean, we have to remember that, you know, that you, Jonathan, own a number of patents to GM crops.
Jonathan Jones: Well, my institution does, yes.
Liz O'Neill: Your institution does own them. And, you know, that is an issue that people need to be aware of.
Jonathan Jones: Sure, and the reason why people licence them is they're really useful.
Liz O'Neill: Well, people - the reason that they use patents is that you can make an awful lot more money than with royalties, but the point is -
Jonathan Jones: You know, you don't make money from royalties, you get royalties on patents - you don't - so that's the only thing a patent's good for, at least if you're an academic, as I am. But, so, if people licence the patent - for example, there's an American company that's licenced a blight-resistant gene for potato blight control, and this will be introduced in the US, which will greatly reduce applications of fungicides in the US -
Liz O'Neill: And that project -
Jonathan Jones: - we could be doing that here, but we're not, because of politics.
Liz O'Neill: No, that project had an enormous amount of public funding, whereas a non-GM approach to blight-resistant potatoes, which has been extremely successful in actually fighting all the different kinds of blight, a number of different kinds of blight, rather than the GM one, which only fights one blight - they've got a crowd-funder on their website - that's how poor they are.
Jonathan Jones: That's not - your science is in error, there.
Liz O'Neill: This isn't a level playing field.
Sarah Brett: Let's just have one more question, one more word from both of you. Is it inevitable, to your mind, Jonathan, that we're going to have GM food more prominently in our shops?
Jonathan Jones: Well, nothing's inevitable. I mean, we have it in our shops anyway by imports, and I think that the benefits are substantial and the insect resistant maize has lower levels of microtoxins, which are rather nasty poisons to have in our diet. So I think that the benefits - the market pull will become overwhelming.
Sarah Brett: And you'd eat it - you're very happy to eat it, you'd happily eat GM all day long, and give it to your children?
Jonathan Jones: Well, every time anybody goes to the US, they're obviously happy to go to eat GM food. I mean, Liz, do you ever go to the US?
Liz O'Neill: Um, I don't go often, certainly, but the 57 -
Jonathan Jones: Do you bring your sandwiches, or ...?
Liz O'Neill: The 57 million people represented by the letter from America are telling us that they're not happy.
Sarah Brett: Um -
Liz O'Neill: All is not rosy, over the pond.
Jonathan Jones: I question if they're really representing 57 million people.
Sarah Brett: We're going to have to leave it there - thank you both very much indeed for speaking to us, Liz O'Neill - a GM sceptic from the group GM Freeze - and Professor Jonathan Jones from the Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich.