My terms of reference are that I am an oil baron of the vegetable variety, and that I have studied this technology for as many years that it has been a commercial issue.

I had a very enlightening trip to the US in 2002, on a study tour which took in the Chicago Board of Trade, several farms and seed companies in Indiana, the regretable lap-dancing incident in Lafayette, Dow Agriscience in Indy, and the truly gargantuan floating elevators of Cargill and ADM in the Mississippi upstream from Nyawleens. The focal point of the trip was, in very general terms, the public acceptance of GM in the US, and the public rejection of GM in Europe, and there was a lot of debate about why this had come about as so satrk a difference. The concept that appealed to me most was that, again in general terms, the governments on both continents had told their peoples that GM is a good thing for the planet, but the defining difference is that the American peoples still believe their politicians, and that the Europeans do not.