GENE TECHNOLOGY AND THE THREAT TO HUMANITY

That this House notes that foods containing products of gene technology are on sale without being labelled as such; that in recent experiments scorpion genes have been added to cabbages to kill caterpillars, toxin genes added to potatoes to kill beetles, human genes added to pigs to make them grow faster and to cows to produce human breast milk; further notes that 62,000 designer animals with altered genes were born in the United Kingdom in 1991 alone, that animal cloning is widely available as a breeding technique and that there is evidence that attempts have been made to clone human beings; regards current measures to supervise these developments as out of date and inadequate; and calls on the Government to adopt a comprehensive gene charter regulating all aspects of gene technology, including safety and ethics, and to seek adoption of such a charter by the international community.