Letter: Hazardous food

Sir: Your leader-writer's suggestion (8 June) that the Prince of Wales is out of order in giving voice to his concerns about the headlong industrial drive towards genetically engineered foods is hard to credit.

The Prince is doing the country a great favour. Over the past 18 months, research reports by Eurobarometer, ourselves and other independent bodies have pointed repeatedly to the degree of well-justified public anxiety and mistrust that surrounds the political and regulatory framework supposedly surrounding this potentially all-pervasive technology. But the machine rolls on unamended.

Last year, in a study sponsored, to its credit, by Unilever (itself a potential beneficiary of the technology), we found that the panoply of ministerial advisory committees and other regulatory mechanisms is failing utterly to engage with issues of central significance for most people - particularly, the unknowns surrounding future cumulative dependency on genetically engineered crops and foods, with the risks of unforeseen (because unforeseeable in terms of current scientific understanding) synergies and ecological or public health mishaps. We urged major new experiments in public involvement and discussion, to attune government and industry to these apparently unrecognised concerns. So far there has been not a vestige of response.

What does it take to get such concerns taken seriously? Hurrah for the Prince of Wales!

ROBIN GROVE-WHITE

Director Centre for the Study of Environmental Change

Lancaster University