Letter: GM crop secrets

Sir: It was with deep foreboding that I read your headline, "We'll hold GM trials in secret, ministers warn" (27 July).

If the statement ascribed to Mr Cunningham, "... if small minorities are determined by illegal methods to impose their minority view on the situation by taking premeditated, reckless action in this way, we may have to reconsider..." is correct, one can only view with stupefaction the fact that such a senior member of the Cabinet is apparently of the opinion that it is only a small minority of people who think in the same way as Lord Melchett and Greenpeace. Opinion polls have indicated that the overwhelming majority of the British public would agree with Lord Melchett; the businessmen who run our supermarket chains have been forced to recognise this fact.

Various of the genetic modifications of our food currently proposed by agrochemical companies may indeed prove to be disastrous; if they do, and if the modifications have been carried out in secret, then those responsible for allowing the disasters to be visited upon the country in this way will find that they are called upon by the electorate to pay a very high price indeed.

Dr J W KING

Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire