Stop messing with my food! – by Ray Collins

• How do you make a woolly jumper?
• Discover the role played by a monk in the story of genetics
• The real dangers of genetic engineering

Dear Sun City 50 Plus Club members,

We are surrounded by a new breed of mad scientists who have the opinion that anything they want to do is fair game, no matter how abhorrent the outcome.

For anyone who is worried that I might have found out that we are about to see strange new creatures walking in our fields, please rest easy – but don’t think it might not happen.

You see they have already begun to mess about with plants in similar ways that would make a cross between a sheep and a kangaroo seem sensible.

Last weekend I woke to the radio telling me that I would soon be able to buy a tomato with the antioxidant properties of a blueberry.

I was genuinely interested as I have long been a fan of the health benefits of tomatoes and blueberries, and thought they might have discovered a traditional old variety with hidden properties.

But, no the next speaker was a scientist who told me that they had succeeded in changing the genetic code in a tomato so that it accepted inserted genes from a blueberry.

I began to imagine a version of Dr Frankenstein laboratory with a tomato and a blueberry strapped to a bench with curly wires running between them, and the mad cackling of a wild haired madman as he throws the huge power switch that sends genes from one to the other…

…I used to watch a lot of Hammer Horror films as a kid!

Despite the image such genetic meddling gives me, I happen to believe that by affecting the way organisms work can only have catastrophic effects.

Let me explain why.

Sweet peas and ancient monks

The father of modern genetics was no scary scientist but a gentle old monk.

Back in 1865 Gregor Mendel was to be found in his greenhouse and garden with a fine haired brush lifting pollen from one sweet pea plant and using it to fertilise another.

He was acting like a bee in carrying the male gamete from the stamens of one plant to the female carpels of the next – a completely natural intervention.

From his work he identified how inheritance worked and how some traits are dominant and others only express in certain circumstances – all from chronicling how his pollen transfer affected the colours of the flowers on the plants.

Mendels work was gentle, natural and devout. The science he used was basic and completely safe to the plants, him & other humans and the environment of the planet.

He would never countenance trying to place sweet pea pollen into a tomato plant, because he simply knew that interspecies reproduction didn’t work, that was how nature intended it.

It might seem a little picky of Mother Nature but each species is designed to breed only within itself, or with very close relatives.

So, in the wild it has been reported that Donkeys and horses interbred, and this was encouraged by humans to create stronger and faster pack animals – but that should really be it.

Other close relative crosses have seen tigers and lions mix (Tiglon), camels and llamas (Cama) and even a disastrous attempt to create more manageable bees by crossing those from Europe with an African species… the result was killer bees – really aggressive bees that attack on sight!

And that alone should be a warning to the scientists involved with interspecies work.
I’m not suggesting that crossing a tomato and a berry would result in a salad that wanted to rip your throat out, just that the outcomes are not predictable and often are an affront to nature.

The growing risk

In the development of all species there have been jumps in evolution, even our own where the latest evidence shows that Homo sapiens (modern man) met with and bred with the Neanderthals.

Imagine the scene…

…it is a serene and warm night on the savannah, a rich mammoth stew is bubbling over the campfire, the effects of fermented fruit juice is beginning to make the atmosphere heavy. Urgs face was softened by the soft light of the fire as it played across his rugged features and incredibly high forehead, Naarg lay her head onto his hairy shoulder and…

Enough of the Mills and Boon I think!

The problem is that the introduction of a ‘new’ species into the gene pool created issues for the children of this coupling.

They were less fertile, they had problems with their digestive tract and suffered from debilitating fatigues (so suggest the anthropologists and psychologists who have been working on the project – I don’t know how they discovered this as diaries from the period are somewhat lacking!).

There was a benefit though, it seems that our forebears had an improved immune system which protected them from the pestilence that eventually wiped out the Neanderthals themselves – strange thing genetics.

And here lies the crux of my concerns. If we start to mess about with genetics either by naturally crossing species which have some affinity, or worse by forcing genes into places they shouldn’t be we run the risk of creating much bigger problems than a few bees that like a bit of aggro.

At the start of this letter I said I was excited by the prospect of an old variety of tomato being discovered that was rich in antioxidants, but in reality why shouldn’t I just have a beautiful tomato salad, maybe with a nice piece of grilled mackerel, and then follow it up with a bowl of fresh blueberries (if they were in season at the time)?

What is the obsession with ‘fast food’ and ‘one stop’ nutrition, the joy of food is in variety and difference.

Yours, as always

Ray Collins
The Good Life Letter

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