By IRNA,
London : Heir to the British throne, Prince Charles warned Wednesday that the adoption of genetic modification in farming has set the world on course for “the biggest disaster, environmentally, of all time.”
In outspoken criticism on GM crops, the prince accused unnamed business corporations of “conducting a gigantic experiment with nature, and the whole of humanity, which has gone seriously wrong.” “We end up with millions of small farmers all over the world being driven off their land into unsustainable, unmanageable, degraded and dysfunctional conurbations of unmentionable awfulness,” he said.
“What we should be talking about is food security, not food production – that is what matters, and that is what people will not understand,” the British heir said in a rare interview with the Daily Telegraph.
The British Royal family normally stays aloof from controversy, especially political, but it is not the first time that the prince has been outspoken on environmental issues.
“If they think it’s somehow going to work because they are going to have one form of clever genetic engineering after another, then count me out because that will be guaranteed to cause the biggest disaster environmentally of all time,” he said.
As evidence, the prince cited environmental problems in countries which have used GM crops to increase food production. He said he had seen first hand the result of over-demand on irrigation systems and the water table in Punjab because of hybrid seeds and grains.
“Look at western Australia. Huge salinisation problems. I have been there. Seen it. Some of the excessive approaches to modern forms of agriculture,” he also said.
The British heir first set out his opposition to GM crops back in 1998 when he said also in an article for the Daily Telegraph that “genetic modification takes mankind into realms that belong to God, and to God alone”.