Letter: Clothed in GM

WELCOME TO the silly season ("M&S sells genetically modified Frankenpants", 18 July). So M&S probably use GM cotton in their under- and other wear selection, and the Consumers' Association and pressure groups such as Friends of the Earth are seriously worried, claiming that "the public" does not want this at all. I sometimes wonder who this public really is for whom they all claim to speak? Is it the same public that does not seem terribly worried by its own use of vast amounts of chemically suspect cleaning agents, as well as fossil fuels, as if there were no tomorrow?

Let us get this in perspective. It is not the GM plants themselves that are the problem but rather the herbicides and pesticides which they are designed to resist. A far greater threat to our liberty to choose is the huge agro-chemical monopolies that are created by the patenting of GM organisms.

MICHAEL WRIST-KNUDSEN

Ely, Cambridgeshire