Earlier this month, Mark Lynas, a prominent UK environmentalist and author, delivered a blunt attack...

Earlier this month, Mark Lynas, a prominent UK environmentalist and author, delivered a blunt attack (text here; video below the fold) on critics of agricultural biotechnology at a farming conference at Oxford University.

Reviewing the development of his opinions on GMOs, Lynas reports that back in the '90s, he had an instant emotional reaction against them. He saw the situation like this: "Here was a big American corporation with a nasty track record, putting something new and experimental into our food without telling us." And so he "helped to start the anti-GM movement," and "spent several years ripping up GM crops." Then, in the process of researching climate change, he "discovered science"; and soon after, he reports, he "discovered that one by one my cherished beliefs about GM turned out to be little more than green urban myths," which he goes on to list.

Lynas is quite correct that the backlash against GMOs is often clouded by emotion.

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