Sir

The organic movement will be grateful for Nature's interest in our well-being (“Diversity in food technology”, Nature 424, 473; 2003), but when you urge us to abandon “self-damaging dogmas”, I hope you'll forgive us for looking at your advice a little sceptically.

You are advising one of the few sectors of UK agriculture that has a real and growing market, strongly supported by consumers, to introduce a radical change in our product. We see no evidence, however, that using genetically modified (GM) crops would further the interests of organic farmers, organic food manufacturers, organic retailers or the millions of people who eat organic food in the United Kingdom.

In your Editorial you say that the Soil Association “will resist seemingly to their dying breath” the idea that GM could be as ethical as conventional plant breeding. Ultimately the decision is up to consumers. Given that people who buy non-organic food have said they don't want GM in it, it's hardly surprising that organic consumers are even more determined that GM should be kept out of organic food.

The significant areas of uncertainty described in the UK government's scientific assessment of GM crops suggest that these consumers know what they're talking about. You say that our determination to keep GM out of organic is “arbitrary and self-defeating”. Was it “arbitrary and self-defeating” when the organic sector banned the feeding of ground-up animal remains to ruminants ten years before the discovery of BSE? This was done in the absence of any scientific evidence and solely on the basis of what you call dogma.

Thankfully the UK government has learned some lessons from past food disasters. In particular, it seems willing to listen to the market and consumers in a way that the overwhelmingly pro-GM scientific establishment in the United Kingdom finds completely impossible.

The UK government has promised to protect organic farming from GM contamination, in line with consumers' wishes (and incidentally with the European Union regulation defining organic production). As you say, there is increasing recognition of what organic farmers and environmentalists have been saying for nearly a decade: namely that coexistence of GM and organic farming may not be possible in the United Kingdom. We shall have to make a choice.