Purple tomatoes
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JUST three weeks ago, I was extolling the virtues of yellow, autumn-fruiting raspberries, making the point that colour is quite important when it comes to acceptance of any object, whether it be a new shirt, a new handbag, a bottle of whisky, tatties or raspberries. So how will the new purple tomato fare in this regard?
Well, according to the reports, we will never know – unless we taste them outside the EU, because they have been created by genetic modification and such things are currently banned from sale in our part of the world.
What’s the fuss, anyway? Many of you will have read the reports that, at the famous John Innes Institute in Norfolk, a gene from a relative of the snapdragon (Antirrhinum) has been implanted in a tomato, causing the fruit to turn purple. That was not the point of the exercise; you could say it was a side-effect.
More importantly, it has led to a significant increase in anti-oxidants in the ripe fruit and, as you must all know, anti-oxidants fight/suppress the effects of free radicals (sounds like a political party to me) in the body. The effect is to lessen the chance of heart disease and a heap of other things.
So it seems that colour is associated with these health-giving properties, because cranberries and blackcurrants are also near the top of the same league table.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world – Australia to be precise – Suntory has finally produced a true-blue rose by using genetic modification.
How do I know that? This story was also reported in a magazine recently, but as a one-time employee of Suntory, I have known about it for some time.
Whether you would want a blue rose or not is unimportant, but I have to say, there must be a potential market for it otherwise the research would not have been carried out because the Suntory people are pretty hard-headed businessmen.
I referred earlier to the current embargo on the sale of GM crop products in the EU. One might ask the question: why? Where have we gone wrong?
The fact is our scientists have been seriously let down by the politicians and the media. We are fed information in “sound bites”. Inflammatory words such as “Frankenstein foods” are used. You never hear about the return of wildlife and better health status of farm workers where fewer pesticides are used because GM crop varieties are grown.
Does anyone seriously believe that biologists involved in GM research are content to see the landscape decimated, our health compromised and our familiar plants and animals perverted in the process as a result of their efforts?
Come on, these are moral, intelligent, in many cases family men and women with children, doing what they do best for the good of mankind. In my view, this situation need not have happened.
I’ll tell you where and when it all started to go wrong. It was when political dogma (for self-preservation) handed the reins to rampant, amoral commercialism.
Following World War II, this country put in the most fantastic effort to improve the living standards of the British population. Included in this, of course, was the need to produce as much food as possible, as cheaply as possible, and in that, the British farming industry excelled itself.
It didn’t do that alone; the British Government played a crucial leading part by creating an extensive research and development network.
This is how it worked. Firstly, the universities were involved in “blue sky” research, right across the spectrum of human activity. Some might say they always had been. It is sometimes described as “think the unthinkable and then prove it works”; take the lid off; don’t accept accepted principles. The best minds in the land were engaged in this way. Methinks Professor Steven Hawking is a modern personification of this role.
From these endeavours, new ideas eventually trickled down to affect our daily lives and that information was available to all – free.
Concurrently, and as part of that trickle-down process, the Government set up institutes dedicated to specific industries and, to return to my discipline, in horticulture, we had centres concentrating on scientific research relating to fruit (East Malling), vegetable (Wellesbourne) and glasshouse (Littlehampton) crop research. In Scotland, the Scottish Crop Research Institute, outside Dundee, had a major remit on soft fruits.
Included on the agenda in a number of these institutes was the subject of genetic modification.
Information from the institutes was available to all who wanted to know – free. Broadening the pyramid as we got nearer to the farmers and growers – the Government set up a whole series of experimental husbandry farms across the country.
In Scotland, this role was played by the three regional agricultural colleges based in Edinburgh, Ayr and Aberdeen, with outstations to accommodate specific crop requirements, such as hill farming, for example. Their role was to take the research results from the institutes and make them work in the field – in other words, develop growing methods and techniques that would make the application of science commercially viable.
Finally, to take the “word” to the masses, there was a team of advisory officers working with farmers and growers to help the transition from traditional methods to more modern, more profitable ways, or to encourage them to try “new crops”.
When I came to Aberdeenshire in 1973, we were working with farmers to grow Calabrese because, at that time, there was a freezer factory at Montrose. All that assistance and information was freely available. As taxpayers, we all had to foot the bill, but the system was remarkably successful.
Then the politicians moved in. They decided that “he who benefits pays”. They began to wind down and eventually close many of these centres north and south of the border. This included reducing the advisory services. When I came back to Scotland in 1973, at a rough count, there were about 20 of us in the horticultural advisory service – and now there are none.
In other words, this extraordinary network of expertise and skill was gradually dismantled.
Admittedly, the cost to the Government was soaring. And, of course, concurrently, as part of the EU, many of our food crops could be imported; indeed, with the extension and spread of world trade, why worry about producing crops at home? (This morning in the supermarket I saw blueberries – from Argentina).
The point is that expertise was bargained away to major companies with global connections, and what do they do? Concentrate their research efforts almost exclusively on the crops which they control. If you want to benefit from the use of these crops, you pay – every time. Yup, it is a crazy world we live in.
What if the first GM crop to be trialled in Scotland had been a blight-resistant potato; do you think there would have been the same furore as there was over the oil seed rape trials? Not on your nelly. But then the chemical companies would have received a double whammy – a smaller return on the investment in GM and a reduction in the sale of chemicals currently required to control the disease.
By the way, there is another chapter on how we are to tackle world starvation, but I’ll leave that until I feel like having another rant.
Next week, we’ll get back to the here and now in our own gardens. Mind you, I’m still wondering how these purple tomatoes will taste.
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