Everywhere I look and turn, people are telling me to get involved and to make a stand against GM. I have leaflets through the door, people on the high street with petitions and it's all over the internet. It seems everyone is anti-GM right now, and they all assume I will agree with them and want to fight the mean GM monster (or whatever personification of frankenstine they've given it).

Well, I can't tell you if it's safe or not - but I can say the whole argument has lost direction. It's not about calculating the risks and making a fair descision, it has also got nothing to do with our future and has become a media hype driven by little more than emotive paper articles. I have never seen so many people who clearly haven't done their research object so loudly. Most of the people I've asked don't agree, yet few can tell me anything about the process, how it works or even name a single example of modified crops currently in usage. It seems to have been entirely overlooked that cross bred plants are used by the hundreds with excellent safe results, despite being unatural and alien to our ecosystem. I have a hybrid Japanese flowering cherry in my garden, it does not fit in with our brittish ecosystem and is just as alien as a GM cherry tree would be, yet it has been there over 80 years and despite being cross fertile with english cherry trees has done no harm at all. The idea unatural plants will go on the rampage contaminating everything in their path isn't a fully formed concept at all, in fact it's highly unlikely.

If the propsal was to plant GM crops on mass outside the lab and sell them in the stores right now, yes I would totally object. However the propsal is to start the early stages of trials and tests in a lab, just simply to find out more info so we can make a better informed choice later when we know what its impact will be. If the government scrap the GM testing by outlawing at such an early stage, it won't be because it's unsafe or a risk, it will be because the public outcry presurised them in to doing it to gain popularity. If this does happen they will be very popular on this debate, and all of us will miss out on the valuable information and benifits we could gain from safe testing. I feel it's wrong to make a descision before we know all the facts, but that's what most people want to do. It's no better than outlawing trial by jury, after all many people have pronounced GM 'guilty' before we even fully know what it is or any firm data on it.

When we have so much starvation and environmental dammage, it seems crazy to pass up trying the technology which could solve so much of it. I strongly feel we should be presurising for highly regulated trials with a calculated risk, then perhaps we can make the right descision in the future based on real facts, and not unfounded propaganda and pictures of evil vegitables with bolts through their necks. I don't want to say no to GM anymore than I want to say yes, I just want to know what I'm being asked to accept or reject before I make a descision...