Letter: Allergic to GM soya

Sir: It would be interesting to know what Zeneca mean when they claim to have produced a hugely successful tomato paste ("Seed ban could lead to `brain drain' ", 19 February). What the company has been largely successful in achieving is the selling of its 1.6 million cans of GM-modified puree to an unsuspecting public who have had little opportunity until last week to understand what their supermarket goods contained and what the implications are for their diet and health.

To suggest, as Zeneca does, that to establish a moratorium on the development of GM foods would deprive consumers of choice is fatuous. What consumer would actually make a positive choice of food with GM ingredients when there is an alternative? The American agribusiness knew the answer to this, and it deliberately mixed GM with traditional soya in order to eliminate that choice.

ROGER IREDALE

Whaley Bridge, Derbyshire