Artificial, synthetic but still necessary

LONDON - If Sir Walter Raleigh were alive today it is unlikely that his proposal to introduce a doubtful-looking vegetable tuber from South America would ever get approval from the many food committees that safeguard the British diet.

In its natural form the potato is so rich in equally natural plant toxins that it would probably be deemed too unsafe for human consumption.

The idea that natural means healthy, wholesome and good is at the heart of Prince Charles's latest broadside against genetically engineered food. Charles argues that scientific rationalism has smothered the guiding principle of the sacred trust between mankind and God, "under which we accept a duty of stewardship for the Earth." If nothing is held sacred, then what is to prevent us treating the world as a "great laboratory of life" where science is allowed to run rampant and unchecked? There is no doubt that the Prince's intervention this week was powerful and emotive, but was he right?

Charles invokes the organic sustainability of the natural world and pits it against the artificial, unnatural and chemically synthetic approach of the scientist and agricultural technologist. His message is simple: scientists should know their place. Nature, the work of the Creator, can do no harm, and we meddle with it at our peril.

Scientists argue the world is more complicated. Humanity has been fighting against Nature for thousands of years. The smallpox virus is natural, so is botulism and plague. If we wanted to follow a "natural" existence, we would not practise medicine. We would allow the many quite natural diseases to take their course. We would not bother to sow crops and store grain, but rely instead on the seasonal bounty that Mother Nature may or may not provide. Above all, if we wanted to be natural, we would not interfere with evolution and let natural selection be the ultimate arbiter of whether we live or die. Quite natural, but quite appalling.

When, about 10,000 years ago, the first proto-agriculturalists selectively picked the ears of cereals that looked most promising for further cultivation, they were breaking with natural evolution. It is not natural for our staple crops to be so heavy with edible produce, as they are now.

Interfering with Nature has enabled the human population to grow to unprecedented levels. Between 1960 and 1995, rice and wheat yields have increased more than twofold thanks to unnatural events - by breeding strains that can resist drought and pests and by adding artificial pesticides and fertilisers to boost production.

No one, least of all the scientists who helped in the so-called Green Revolution of the past 40 years, will say this success has come without any costs. It has. Chemical sprays have left their indelible mark on wildlife, genetic diversity has been lost in the drive for monocultural efficiency and pests have fought back by becoming resistant to the artificial toxins we threw at them.

Yet to do nothing would have meant certain disaster for the human species. Charles is old enough to remember the doom-merchants of the 1960s who predicted mass starvation and social collapse as a result of famines and food shortages. They calculated that the food production techniques of 40 years ago would not sustain a world population growing at such a rate. The Green Revolution has run its course. More and more chemical fertilisers have now to be added to a crop to achieve the same yields; agricultural land and water supplies are becoming more scarce in the world, yet the global population is set to rise from six billion to nine billion within the next 50 years.

GE technology offers the most promising solution in that it allows better crops to be developed more quickly than is possible by conventional breeding.

The technology can lower our reliance on chemical sprays. Maarten Chrispeels, professor of plant biology at the University of California in San Diego says that the planting in 1998 of GE crops in the US resulted in a "12 per cent decline in pesticide use." Eliminating the recently identified gene that causes "pod shattering" in oil-bearing canola seeds meant farmers could double yields. GE technology should allow canola seed farmers to grow crops on half the land they once used, so using half as much fertiliser and pesticide.

GE technology can improve human health even more directly. Natural toxins produced by moulds can be highly lethal. Mycotoxins on organically grown nuts have killed thousands of people. American scientists have found that GE corn contains lower levels of mycotoxins because the grain is less prone to insect damage, which has allowed moulds to grow more easily on the grain.

Scientists also plan to produce edible vaccines in plants, a simple, sterile way of delivering a vital medicine to children in the developing world. Infant diarrhoea caused by intestinal infections probably kills more babies than any other single disease. A GE vegetable or fruit bearing an entertoxin vaccine is a potential life-saver. GE rice enriched with vitamin A promises to prevent blindness in children in the developing world.

Unnatural, artificial and synthetic as GE technology is, we cannot afford to ignore its benefits. If every farmer was to till the land in the same, organic fashion as the Duchy of Cornwall there would only be enough food to feed about four billion people in the world - about two billion short of the current total. We have no choice but to continue our age-old struggle against the limits of Nature. We cannot rely on God to do it for us.

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