JRI + GM

The John Ray Initiative Environment Conference today held my attention for only half its length, I'm afraid to say. "Progress or Problem? Responding to Genetically Modified Food and Crops" was the title.  "Some question whether this is even a debatable subject," its introducer warned. The first speaker, scientist Joe Perry of the EFSA, made out a good case for us to be there: a Christian and a risk assessor, he holds the firm view that GM is not productive of consequences of necessity outside God's will. And there is plenty to object in modern agriculture apart from GM. Organic farming is rarely enough. However, there was a sharp intake of breath around me when he asked, "Why shouldn't GM be integrated into organic agriculture?"

I hadn't really grasped the reason why GM product approval was so much quicker to obtain in North America than Europe: across the Atlantic there simply isn't the pattern of hedgerows and copses, the intermingling of villages with farmsteads. So what noisy local opposition is there likely to be to blanket spraying?

The JRI's Chair, John Weaver, spoke next, concentrating more on ethical and theological considerations. For a Baptist minister, he gave a surprising amount of credence to Catholic Social Teaching, especially its emphasis on nature as gift: it's not a reality to be left alone, but humanity is entrusted to evaluate and use it for the common good. The Catholic Church's overemphasis on the anthropocentric was let pass.

The supersize butterfly model in my photograph indicates perhaps which side some of the students of our hosts Redcliffe College, Gloucester were on in this GM debate.

Discovering Gloucester

Though we live so near, I paid two visits yesterday to parts of Gloucester that were unknown to me. In the evening, David Behar Perahia presided over a performance as artist in residence in the Cathedral, leading a very informal procession up into the spacious tribune gallery, from which I discovered there is a spectacular view of the Choir and - in daylight - the East Window. Earlier, our serried ranks had dribbled through the Cloisters, where actor/musicians had sat in each corner before blocks of stone, which they attacked periodically (and rhythmically) to give a vivid impression of what it must have felt like to have been there when the building was being erected.

The artist's starting point was "awe and wonder about the simple idea that this cathedral was built out of human measures." And admirably did he and his young cast, by this unusual and imaginative performance, convey the same sense to me - as I guess to many of the large number present, for most of whom visiting the Cathedral would be a very occasional experience.

In the morning and afternoon, I had attended the conference organised by The John Ray Initiative entitled "Energising the future" at Redcliffe College. Though it is a short distance from the City Centre, its grounds are extensive, the rear garden being dominated by this huge plane tree, ringed at present by croci. Though the four speakers contradicted one another frequently, it was all very gentlemanly. But having been duly stimulated, I was glad by teatime to be able to escape from what is essentially a talking shop.