GM crops led to suicides,says Charles

By OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT LondoN Oct. 6: Prince Charles, an avowed opponent of genetically-modified crops, has said that genetically-modified farming techniques were responsible for suicides by small farmers in India. Delivering the Sir Albert Howard Memorial Lecture via videolink to Dr Vandana Shiva’s Navdanya last week, Prince Charles highlighted "the truly appalling and tragic rate of small farmer suicides in India, stemming in part from the failure of many GM crop varieties." In August, the Prince of Wales had been criticised by the then environment minister Phil Woolas for his criticism of genetically-modified crops. The Prince had claimed that that firms developing genetically-modified crops risked environmental disaster. He had called genetically-modified crops a "gigantic experiment with nature and the whole of... [read full story]