Dialogue: Let GM show us short green grass

By GARTH GEORGE

For once the Government has made the right decision and has allowed genetic modification field trials to be conducted provided there are satisfactory controls.

To have done otherwise would have been to surrender to the scientific Luddites and ill-informed doom-sayers who, according to a letter in this newspaper, have so terrified one woman that she agonises over buying food products in a supermarket.

As far as I'm concerned, the scientists can fiddle about with the genes of animals, fish, birds and plants to their inquisitive hearts' content and they are welcome to make a dollar or a million out of modifying them as long as it benefits people.

When God created mankind he gave us dominion over all the fish of the sea, the birds of the air and over "every living thing that moves on the Earth in which there is life" plus all the herbs and trees, especially those that provide food.

So if popping a fish gene into a vegetable will give us a more nutritious, faster-growing, tastier and cheaper product, or if splicing a vegetable gene into a fish gives us more of them so the exorbitant price of fish comes down, then the sooner they get on with it the better.

And if with their gene technology scientists are able to prevent, treat and cure crippling and/or fatal diseases, then let's make sure they get all the research money they need and give them our wholehearted moral support.

There a few things I would like to see come out of genetic engineering.

The first is to modify grass so that it grows exactly 2.5cm high then stays at that height, winter and summer, all the while maintaining its greenness.

I wouldn't be surprised if science hasn't already have achieved that, but the patents were probably bought for billions of dollars by the makers of lawnmowers, line-trimmers and all the other gear needed to keep lawns looking nice.

Soil scientists might then apply their minds to creating a soil that will grow all the flowers, shrubs and trees we like to plant but which sterilises every weed seed that drops therein.

Others might undertake research into modifying chlorine so the swimming pool water develops a glass-hard surface below a specified temperature and all the leaves, dust and pollen can be vacuumed off with a conventional vacuum cleaner.

And while they're at it they could insert into the chlorine something that is absolutely repellent to ducks.

Then they might genetically engineer sausage skins so they don't burst and so the filling doesn't squirt out the ends during cooking, which they rarely did when I was much younger as long as you pricked them and cooked them slowly.

One of my fondest memories is of the homemade jam my mother used to make - particularly raspberry but including apricot, strawberry, peach and plum. The jars you buy off the supermarket shelf have never been anything but a pale imitation.

But since the neglect of a hamfisted dentist to whom I was taken in my youth brought the necessity for false teeth in my early 30s, I have never really enjoyed raspberry jam, either homemade or bought.

So science could do all of us with false teeth a tremendous favour by modifying raspberries (and boysenberries, too, for that matter) so they no longer have seeds but retain their unique flavour. That shouldn't be difficult; we have had seedless grapes for yonks.

One of the real pleasures of this spring has been the regular visits to the virgillias growing outside our lounge of a pair of rainbow lorikeets, those magnificent birds whose acquaintance we made first in central Queensland.

Outside our bedroom window in Rockhampton there grew a huge African violet tree, to the nectar of which the lorikeets at a certain time of year were addicted. They would come in their scores to suck at it and amuse us no end with their intoxicated antics, falling out of the tree, flying into windows and so on.

Which is, incidentally, where the simile "pissed as a parrot" originated.

I was pleasantly surprised when they arrived in this city and have looked askance at the efforts of Sandra Lee - not the brightest bulb in the cabinet string - and her bumbling department (as in "What's up DoC?") spending heaps of our money trying to get rid of them.

I don't for a moment believe they are any threat to our native birds (DoC has been wrong about so many things that it's unlikely) but that they add tremendously to the variety and colour of our birdlife.

And anyway, in these days of genetic engineering, what's to stop scientists implanting in our lorikeets - which are extraordinarily beautiful until they open their beaks - the alternating calls of the tui and bellbird?

* Email Garth George