Eloise Gibson of the NZ Herald reports that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s science adviser has upset the anti-GM lobby by suggesting that people will starve in coming decades if groups continue to fight GM research and development.
Dr Nina Fedoroff has said that climate change could mean a drop in food production capabilities, in the face of rising populations. As a result, GM food could be the best way to prevent starvation, and that current anti-GM positions could change in the face of future need.
An excerpt: (read in full here)
“Nina Fedoroff, science adviser to the United States Secretary of State, says people will starve if climate change cuts water supplies and raises temperatures while people remain too afraid to use genetically modified crops.
…
“Last year, New Zealand lobbyists overturned a 10-year vegetable genetic modification trial by a Government-owned company when they discovered plants that should have been destroyed had instead been left to flower, exposing their GM pollen to the environment.
“Dr Fedoroff said in 30 years of laboratory tests and 15 years’ commercial production “nobody had documented so much as a headache”.
“”How many more decades of testing do you want?” she asked.”