Video description

On the 19th of July in 2011 the National Press Club of Australia held a debate on climate change. I will be analysing the claims Monckton made during the debate and if they are correct or not.

Here Monckton makes the claim that GM crops have been in use for a long time and are safe for human consumption. But does what Monckton say match up with with reality?

Transcript

But then as far as GM science is concerned, genetic modification has been practiced for decades in crops, and has lead among other things for instance to what used to be called miracle rice, when I was a lad learning about this in school - and we were taught to admire this because of the greater yields that the rice had achieved, and therefore the many starving people in Africa would be saved from suffering.

So I think that what we've got to get back to is true science. Whether it's for GM crops or whether it's the climate. No more of this nonsense about consensus - back to the equations.

There's a small problem with Monckton learning about GM in school, let me explain why.

According to his resume the last year he received an education was in 1974, the importance about this is that the technology of transgenics, what we know of as genetic modification, was invented in 1973. The very first genetically modified organism was created in 1978. It was a bacteria modified to produce human insulin.

The first genetically modified plants became available in the eighties, which were tobacco plants. The first genetically modified crop approved for commercial production that I could find was the FlavrSavr tomato, which was approved in 1994. This means GM food crops have barely been in use for two decades, let alone since Monckton was a lad.

But there was indeed a miracle rice developed in the sixties that has greater yields. The detail is, it's not a GM crop. All the new plants that were developed during the green revolution were the result of cross breeding.

I'm not entirely sure why he made this particular claim, as it wasn't even necessary to make his point that GM food crops are safe for human consumption. It's the consensus in the literature on this subject. Which makes it strange that he takes a shot at the scientific consensus on global warming and climate change.

Sources

1. UKIP - CHRISTOPHER: A MAN OF MANY TALENTS (page is no longer available, an archived copy can be found here)
2. Farming in the 1950s & 60s
3. Green Revolution
4. Genetically modified organism
5. Genetically modified crops
6. Genetically modified bacteria

Media resources

1. young tobacco plants by Romtomtom
2. Tomatoes ready for planting by Dwight Sipler
3. CHR_4447 by IRRI Images