Prince Charles is on an anti-biotech kick. And he's not being shy with his comments. He recently made the controversial connection between transgenic cotton failures and farmer suicides in India.

The Independent also reports:

[Prince Charles] said that 'any GM crop will inevitably contaminate neighbouring fields,' making it impossible to maintain the integrity of organic and conventional crops. For the first time in history this would lead to 'one man's system of farming effectively destroying the choice of another man's' and 'turn the whole issue into a global moral question.' He quoted Mahatma Gandhi who condemned 'commerce without morality' and 'science without humanity.' He added: 'One must surely ask the question whether – if only from a precautionary point of view – it might be wise to keep some areas of the world free from GM-based agriculture.'

The Prince attacked the contention that 'GM food is now essential to feed the world,' saying that the evidence showed that modified crops' yields were 'generally lower than their conventional counterparts.' He called them 'a wrong turning on the route to feeding the world in a sustainable or durable manner' and 'a risky and expensive distraction, diverting attention and resources away from those real, long-term solutions such as crop varieties which respond well to low input systems that, in turn, do not rely on fossil fuels.' There was substantial evidence 'to show that a growing world population can be fed most successfully in the long term by agricultural systems that manage the land within environmental limits.'

Source: The Independent

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