Dear Jeremy Cooke,

In "GM food Monster or saviour?" (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7426054.stm) you write in connection with GM foods "It is something that Americans, generally, do not even think about. Certainly, throughout the four years my family and I spent in New York we must have eaten hundreds of meals containing GM in blissful ignorance."

Perhaps the same story could be told about fertilizer, pesticides, "diet" foods, the motor car and even digital technology. First one captures an easy, uncritical market (in this case Americans -who generally seem to be blissfully ignorant of most things until they jump up and bite them) -and then this market is used as a base to break down resistance in other more critical markets All based on the simple (but false) logic that if it is "good" for one market then it must be good for the others.

Maybe one should ask Is it really so "good" -even for the uncritical (American) market? In many cases, long after new, world saving, "wonder" technology has been introduced, perhaps generations afterwards, when the damage starts to get visible and the technology is so deeply embedded that we we can hardly imagine living without it -we suddenly discover the problems of unwanted algae growth, the silent spring, obesity, global warming, digital feudalism and a host of other unexpected and undesirable side effects.

For years I've been hearing that computer users don't need to understand digital technology -just as motorists don't need to understand what is happening "under the motor cap"..... Now we are discovering that what happens under the motor cap has important and wide ranging (global, strategic) implications -including the invasion of Iraq in support of US energy security, the universal threat of global warming and perhaps even the price of food due to the increase in the production of bio-fuels....

You write "I get the feeling that most people in Britain instinctively distrust "industrialised agriculture"."

Presumably, many people in Britain are aware of the horrors of the first "industrial revolution" and are therefore instinctively suspicious of other such revolutions. Maybe sensitivity to "instincts" can be more life preserving than (American, commercially propagated and carefully preserved) "blissful ignorance".

I get the feeling that journalists allow themselves to be manipulated in the most simple but cynical ways by official spokespeople. As a foreign correspondent, I assume that you are presumably aware of the dissonance between the official line and the "facts on the ground" in many places around the world. In the Middle East, for example, I am sure the situation is not so black/white as we are told to believe. Only recently, with the exposure of the "Jewish lobby" have we been allowed to hear that Palestinian deaths far outnumber the Jewish deaths that are used as an excuse for violent retaliation and revenge -a case where the retaliation is far greater than the supposed cause. The idea that not only Jews (and Americans) might be allowed to revenge themselves for attacks by outsiders on them still seems to be a difficult subject for Western journalists (and public) to swallow. Here in the Philippines, the BBC seems only interested in "human interest" stories -or sensationalising the image of dangerous rebels undermining law and order (justifying American intervention in Muslim areas). News reports such as "First Gentleman Arroyo accused of evading CARP law for seven years " (http://www.gmanews.tv/story/97652/Presidents-husband-accused-of-evading-...) seem to be carefully avoided -perhaps because they undermine the myths promoted by Western governments by calling into question the true nature of the global international military-industrial system, the people who sustain it and the way they profit from creating the problems that they can subsequently exploit as a way of providing "solutions".

I'm sure that we are all aware of similar stories to "GM food Monster or saviour?". The basic structure is always the same -although apparently dealing with different problems Terrorist attacks are a good excuse for bombing and invading other countries -and for promoting "energy security", which then helps to promote nuclear energy (despite the problems of storage, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the use of nuclear material by terrorists, etc...) -in turn, these problems allow the promotion of bio-fuels which help drive up food costs (in a world already struggling to survive against the excesses of years of (now) unchecked neo-liberalism). Rising food costs are then used to promote GM crops -which are apparently intended to keep a fundamentally unsustainable system (presumably requiring ever higher levels of energy and other forms of security) limping on for another few years -so that even more profit can be made before the consequences of yet another new (dream) policy become too obvious.... And so on.....

"First of all, GM is enabling farmers to grow more crop from the same amount of acreage in a world where we're struggling to feed the population, that has to be good. It's also enabling farmers to grow the crops with less use of insecticides, or fungicides or weed killers. Again, that's a green win. Together, I think it's technology for the future," Mr Lister says.

A fine optimistic piece of propaganda to end with. However, perhaps the real (unanswered) question is why are we still struggling to feed the population -especially after so many previous "green" revolutions? Weren't the "insecticides, or fungicides or weed killers", that GM crops will supposedly "save" us from, the very same things that were supposed to "save" us from previous problems? So why shouldn't we suspect that the same story will soon be repeated (with new variations) regarding GM crops?

Perhaps the answer doesn't lie in technology -but in politics and in economics. As a foreign correspondent you must have noticed some of the structural problems and inequalities that both underlie and cause deep rooted (post-colonial) problems in various parts of the world. Or perhaps you were so busy enjoying the fun of being a reporter that you never really noticed the real significance of the things you were reporting.

Does the BBC deliberately move its reporters around so that they don't build up the kind of expertise that might help them to really understand the problems they earn their living reporting? To be honest, I have heard some good foreign news reporting on the BBC World Service Radio (before it transferred priority to the Internet and I lost contact) -but it seems that similar standards are not applied to the reporting of science, lifestyle and technology issues -which are often sadly (and dangerously) uncritical.

Yours sincerely,
Trevor Batten
http://www.tebatt.net/