A quotation leapt to mind when reading “Gene editing ‘would allow us to create hardier farm breeds’ (News): “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong” (HL Mencken). Application of magic bullet “solutions” has got our species into many disastrous situations, from Australian cane toad waves to an explosion in obesity linked to the prescription of low-fat diets.
To support environmentally disastrous factory farming by modifying animals to resist one disease would only invite the spread of more pathogens that threaten humans and other animals.
A simple flick of a genetic switch in a giant monoculture crop to enable greater drought resistance would have widespread impacts on soil ecologies, water and nutrient cycles, promote continuation of disastrous farming practices and more “superweeds”.
Food security and a healthy planet and human population demand an end to trying to cosh nature into submission and instead building our knowledge and understanding of natural systems, innovation that builds healthy soils, increases genetic diversity within crops and animals, the use of a wide range of crop species and an end to the food waste of factory farming.
Natalie Bennett, Green peer
House of Lords, London SW1
To suggest that gene editing is comparable to traditional breeding is nonsense. Gene editing is an entirely laboratory-based process depending on significant human intervention and aimed at achieving quick results. This is a world away from conventional breeding grounded in sexual reproduction over many generations.
In reality, gene editing is far closer to genetic modification (GM). EU Law defines a GM organism as one in which “the genetic material has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination”. This is clearly a description of gene editing as much as of mainstream GM.
It may be true that meddling with animal genetics has the potential to bring about improvements in health and welfare, such as by increasing immunity to diseases or reducing the ability to feel pain. But this misses the point that most of the problems that gene editing seeks to address are manmade, resulting from intensive farming systems, with animals being kept in artificial systems at high densities.
Our native livestock breeds, on the other hand, were bred to thrive in our landscape. If the right breed is kept in the right place, at the right density, its health and welfare needs will be met, with minimal need for intervention. The problems gene editing seeks to address simply do not occur in the way they do with intensive systems.
Accordingly, if we want high welfare farming it makes far more sense to encourage the use of native breeds in extensive systems. It is only if we continue with industrialised intensive farming that we need gene editing.
Christopher Price, chief executive, Rare Breeds Survival Trust
Kenilworth, Warwickshire
Rather than back gene editing to produce disease resistant livestock, regulatory permission that encourages investment in and production of cultured meat could deliver far greater benefits. Why continue to pursue developments that support environmentally damaging, intensive livestock production when “clean meat” grown from painless biopsies taken from a few pampered animals can deliver cheap protein at the same time as reducing deforestation for soy production, pollution of our rivers, CO2 emissions, animal cruelty, and food miles, as well as creating a better working environment.
“Real” meat from traditionally reared grass-fed animals would continue to be produced on a smaller scale as a luxury item that commanded higher prices and in the process worked alongside nature. How perverse that, as a country that led the way in vaccine development, the UK is so far behind the curve, while work in the US, Holland and Israel makes real progress. We are, after all, facing a greater calamity than the coronavirus pandemic in the form of climate change and environmental degradation.
Patrick Cosgrove
Chapel Lawn, Shropshire
Plight of mothers in jail
Reading about the 18-year-old woman on remand having to give birth alone in a cell after her requests for help were ignored, and the subsequent death of her daughter, one wonders how much longer the jailing of pregnant women and young mothers can be justified on safety and moral grounds (“Prison guards get counselling after baby dies in cell – but not mother”, News).
Jane Brighton
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
What did John McDonnell do?
John McDonnell accuses Keir Starmer of “reaching for the Blairite playbook” (“Dump the New Labour playbook, Keir, and set out your programme for radical change”, Comment). Through being in office, Tony Blair’s Labour introduced the minimum wage, invested massively in schools and the NHS and reduced inequality. What did Messrs McDonnell and Corbyn achieve, apart from losing two general elections?
Stuart Skyte
Oxford
Understanding abuse
Lisa Bachelor asks what can be done to make Britain safer for women (“When will women feel safe on our streets?”, special report). Sexual harassment of, mainly, women and girls has escalated, and recent cases of femicide have triggered responses of fear and outrage, with calls for changes in the law and police responses to these crimes. These changes are necessary, as is the need for schools to introduce awareness of the harm caused by abuse and harassment and bullying. But increased charging and sentencing will not work unless we also address possible causes.
What we should be asking is: why do men and boys carry out abusive and violent assaults on women and girls? In cases where the victim is unknown to the assailant, does the perpetrator have a history of watching pornography or other videos depicting violence against women? When the victim is known to the perpetrator, is there a history of abuse and violence in the assailant’s childhood?
Pat Brandwood
Broadstone, Dorset
In Rubens’ name
It came as no surprise to me that new computer analysis of the National Gallery’s prized Samson and Delilah shows a 91% probability that it is not actually by Rubens (“Was famed Samson and Delilah really painted by Rubens? No, says AI”, News). As far back as 1992, with fellow artists Steve Harvey and Sian Hopkinson, I submitted a report to the gallery laying out clear stylistic, technical and documentary evidence against the painting. This report is available, along with a new video summarising the case, at www.inRubensName.org.
Our research then and subsequently has been sidelined and often ridiculed. The National Gallery has too often fallen back on the authority of a small group of Rubens experts, while ignoring the commonsense evidence in plain sight. Surely there can now be little doubt that this contentious work, bought for a record sum by the gallery with public money, was a costly mistake. But after three decades of obfuscation, what is really at stake here is the credibility of the art establishment as a whole.
In 1997, the gallery promised to arrange a public debate on this painting. There is an opportunity now for them to finally deliver on that promise, with the openness and transparency we expect from all our public institutions.
Euphrosyne Doxiadis
Athens
Feminists, work together
Sonia Sodha’s article was a blast of fresh air (“‘White feminists’ are under attack from other women. There can only be one winner – men”, Comment). We deeply need such voices to take issue with the vogue for making women – and white feminists in particular – the source of all ills. Rafia Zakaria’s book Against White Feminism exemplifies this unappetising trend.
Over the past 40 years I’ve been involved in a plethora of feminist activities, from raising funds for women and girls’ education in developing countries to establishing a rape crisis centre in Sheffield. And I know many other women doing the same. Using guilt and blame to paralyse ordinary women like me – grassroots activists who bring about radical advances – is so counter-productive that it’s tragic. As Sodha says, the one thing attacking women like us “will never ever do is change the world for the better”. We’ll continue to try to bring about that change, even if we have to brave Zakaria’s contempt and ridicule in the process.
Jo Adams
Abingdon, Oxfordshire
Mistaken identity
I genuinely expected the article “‘Elite v plebs’: Oxford rivalries of boys who would never grow up to be men” (News) to be about the composition of our current government.
Jennifer Mirdamadi
Liverpool
• This page was amended on 6 October 2021. The letter written by Patrick Cosgrove was in an earlier version incorrectly attributed to Christopher Price. The letter that Christopher Price had actually submitted has now been published here also. We apologise to both writers for this editing error.
