Prince Charles issues GM disaster warning
Wednesday, 13 Aug 2008 08:36
Prince Charles warns against the development of genetically modified crops
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Prince Charles has claimed the development of genetically modified crops risks becoming the greatest environmental disaster ever.
The heir to the throne told the Daily Telegraph that GM crops were damaging the world's soil and represented an experiment "gone seriously wrong".
"What we should be talking about is food security not food production - that is what matters and that is what people will not understand," he told the newspaper.
"And if they think also that somehow it's all going to work because they are going to have one form of clever genetic engineering after another then again count me out, because that will be guaranteed to cause the biggest disaster environmentally of all time."
The Prince of Wales added that reliance on corporations for the mass production of food would potentially threaten future food supplies and that smaller farmers would suffer.
"If they think this is the way to go we will 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 then you count me out. I think it will be an absolute disaster."
Prince Charles has his own organic farm on his Highgrove Estate and has long campaigned against GM crops.