Chef’s attitude to State funding of biotech conference is hard to swallow

CHEF Lorcan Cribbin’s concerns about unbalanced Government funding of the UCC agriculture biotechnology conference (August 25) are hard to swallow as he expressed no concerns when the Government supported an unbalanced anti-GM food conference on June 16-18, 2006 at Kilkenny Castle, which the Government donated for free.

In addition, Mr Cribbin fails to mention that anti-GM speakers pulled out of a public debate planned in UCC preferring to appear at a political press conference organised by Kathy Sinnot MEP.

Those who attended this one-sided event witnessed misleading and incorrect information debunked by scientists who took the anti-GM food speakers to task. It’s a pity the Irish Examiner didn’t bother to send a journalist to cover the event but preferred to rely on that fine journalistic skill of ‘cutting and pasting’ from anti-GM press releases.