Minister challenges Prince Charles to prove GM crops threat
Phil Woolas says government will go ahead with trials unless scientific evidence shows GM crops are harmful

A government minister today challenged the Prince of Wales to prove his claim that firms developing genetically modified crops risked environmental disaster. "If it has been a disaster then please provide the evidence," said Phil Woolas, the environment minister, in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph. He accused Prince Charles of ignoring the needs of the world's poorest countries by attacking GM crops, and insisted the government would go ahead with trials unless scientific evidence showed they were harmful.

On Wednesday, after the prince told the Daily Telegraph that GM crops were an experiment "gone seriously wrong", the government said it welcomed all voices in the debate and stressed that safety was its priority. But in highly critical comments that suggest high-level anger at the prince's intervention, Woolas said the government had a "moral responsibility" to investigate whether GM crops could help alleviate hunger in the developing world. It was easy for people in countries where food was plentiful to ignore the potential of GM to raise agricultural productivity, he said.

"I'm grateful to Prince Charles for raising the issue. He raises some very important doubts that are held by many people. But government ministers have a responsibility to base policy on science and I do strongly believe that we have a moral responsibility to the developing world to ask the question: can GM crops help? "I don't understand the reasoning behind the assertion that this is dangerous for climate change."

Woolas stressed the government had yet to decide whether it should relax the controls on the cultivation of GM crops. "Should the UK change our policy on GM to one that is more liberal?" he said. "The government has not got a predetermined decision."

The Sunday Telegraph quoted a Labour source as saying the prince had "overstepped the mark". The newspaper quoted a source close to the prince as saying he did not intend to cause a political row and "simply cares for the future". Green groups including Friends of the Earth and the Soil Association supported the prince's view that GM crops would not help to solve the food crisis.

(By Jenny Percival, The Guardian, 17/08/2008)