CALL TO BLOCK `FRANKENSTEIN SCIENCE'
PA 08.08.97 15:26
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By Amanda Brown, Environment Correspondent, PA News
Trade Ministers were today urged to block moves aimed at boosting
the spread of "Frankenstein science," - genetic
engineering that allegedly causes suffering to farm animals.
Members of Compassion in World Farming held a demonstration
outside the central London offices of the Department of Trade and
Industry in protest at the threat to cattle, pigs, chickens and
other commercially farmed creatures.
They want DTI Minister John Battle to halt EU moves for the
granting of patents on genetically engineered animals - a
development they say ignores suffering and regards them as
inventions.
Richard Hardy, spokesman for CIWF, told PA News: "Genetic
engineering will become a dirty word. It is the next welfare
problem for our farm animals in the next century and one we have
to focus on.
"Do we need to have so many animals suffer when we are
already producing so many that aren't eaten? There is so much
cruelty with factory farming. We don't want to see it extended,
we don't want to see these animals pushed beyond their physical
limits."
He said people "will not want genetic engineering - it's
Frankenstein science".