Horizon – Jimmy’s GM Food Fight
Is GM food the answer to the world’s foods problems? Or is it a Frankenstein science which will contaminate the world’s ecosystems and boost profits for a handful of multinational corporations? Jimmy Doherty, scientist and farmer, embarks on a mission to find out for BBC Two’s Horizon.
Last year, Jimmy’s own pig farm was home to nearly 1,000 pigs – but, earlier this year, there were barely 200. Why? Because, he says, the rising cost of grain meant he couldn’t afford to feed them any more.
From the Sixties to mid-Eighties, the world saw the greatest expansion of food in its history. It is said the green revolution saved a billion people from starvation. But the world’s population is still increasing, and conservative estimates suggest productivity needs to be doubled in the next 50 years to feed everyone.
Jimmy discovers how the UK has become virtually a GM-free zone because of the strength of protests against the technology. He visits research labs to find out more, creates his own GM barley and sees deep purple tomatoes genetically modified to be rich in antioxidants traditionally found in berries.
He travels to Argentina and the USA, who are embracing the GM revolution. In the USA, Americans have been eating GM corn and Soya for over 10 years – with no apparent ill effects. And, in Argentina, he sees thousands of hectares of GM Soya beans which helped save the country from economic crisis in the Nineties. But he also discovers the environmental impact of the GM revolution there.
In large parts of the developing world, getting enough to eat is an everyday struggle and 800 million people are permanently malnourished (Source: United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation 2006). So Jimmy travels to one of the wealthier countries in Africa – Uganda. Here, he hears how whole crops of bananas are being devastated by Black Sigatoka disease. Are genetically modified bananas the answer to save the fruit from destruction?
The debate over GM food has been raging for over a decade and Jimmy wants to find out where the truth lies. Is GM a good thing? Or should it be banned from farms and plates?
Tuesday 25 November
9.00-10.00pm BBC TWO
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Hi just watched Jimmys programme,
Horizon completely sold out to a one sided pseudo scientific claptrap from Jimmy.
Did he ask the Homish person what he thought about his field of GM maize in which every single cell of every single plant produces an insecticide (from the bt gene)?
Did Jimmy take his GM insecticide filled maize cobs to an american village? NO
Did Jimmy mention the sterile seeds that are produced, stopping farmers saving their own seed, maintaining the monopoly of the giant multinationals that sponsor the reasearch and development of GM crops? NO
where was the organic trust’s viewpoint?
Jimmy calls himself a scientist, his one sided, smirking approach to his interviews combined with the interesting editing style of anti GM campaigners produced another example of poor television. All checked shirt, dodgy quiff and giggles.
Jimmy, maybe its time to go back to the city, make some reality TV shows and catch yourself on.
An hour spent on google will almost certainly give you a better overview of the situation than watching this documentary, which is incredibly simplified and quite flawed. Also, there is little or no investigation of organic, which is essential to even get into the debate on farming methods. I’m surprised that Jimmy Doherty was a scientist. Perhaps he should brush up on the science of ecology.
A TV programme with the usual clichés of ’science’ versus ‘emotion’. The film gives us science on the side of the GM business and emotion on the side of the public and protesters. Its whole method is to portray Jimmy as raising some criticisms of GMO’s only to be enlightened by ’science’.
Actually, studies have shown no decrease in pesticide use with herbicide resistant crops - but Jimmy continues throughout the programme to repeat his dubious claims. And of course the UK’s farmscale trials showed damage to agricultural biodiversity. Other studies have shown reduced yields with GM crops and the failure of Bt crops (insect resistance). Therefore the evidence is much more mixed than Horizons predictable boosterism.
Would have been good to show the recently published (Nov 08) study commissioned by the Austrian Government on Monsanto’s GM Bt Maize. Lead by Dr Jurgen Zentek, Professor for Veterinary Medicine at the University of Vienna, this first ever long term multi generational study on mice revealed disturbing information about long term reduced fertility in Mice fed Monsanto’s product.
It would have therefore been possible for Horizon to depict white coated scientists in a lab warning about GMO risks, and showing graphic examples of batches of mice of different sizes etc.
But Horizon’s main mission is gee whiz boosterism.
Bet now we get loads of viewers now proclaiming their enlightenment against anti-gmo superstition, because they have seen a ‘factual’ TV programme!
This programme on GM was rubbish & biased.It made me search the internet where I found disturbing evidence against GM which master Jimmy should have uncovered & questioned!!!! See www i-sis.org.uk on& the link between agrobacterium (mentioned on the programme) &Morgellons disease. Frightening!