New Lords of Creation/Bitter Harvest

1. Out of Eden

This new series tells the inside story of the most controversial technology in recent years- genetically modified food. The film-makers talked to the scientists who dream of transforming the world, the industrialists who believe it will become the richest and most powerful
global business, the activists who fight to stop them, and the farmers whose fields have turned into battlegrounds.

Out of Eden includes the first revolutionary experiments and bitterly fought over field trials, the race to produce the world's first GM food, and the rise of Monsanto - the chemical giant which gambled all to become the dominating force in biotechnology in the 21st Century.

Researcher Kate Carter
Executive Producer Glynn Jones

2 Bitter Harvest

The second part of the inside story of probably the most powerful technology ever developed.

Having conquered America the giant biotech companies such as Monsanto set their sights on Europe. They expected a walk-over, but the arrival of genetically modified foods became the most controversial issue in living memory. Ships were intercepted, fields trashed, supermarkets disrupted, politicians accosted by naked demonstrators, a trade war threatened, and a giant global corporation was brought to its knees.

Producer Katherine Quarmby
Executive Producer Glynn Jones

3 On the Eight Day

The last part of the series on biotechnology looks to the future. The first wave of genetically modified foodstuffs caused massive controversy, but scientists hope that upcoming products such as obesity cures, and healthy nicotene free cigarettes will win acceptance. Drugs including possible cures for cancer will be grown in plants. But will we accept their plans for animals - goats crossed with spiders, chickens and fish with human genes? Could this be the next battleground?

Producer David Street
Executive Producer Glynn Jones
...
Sunday 16 June 2002
Bitter Harvest
8.00-8.50pm BBC TWO

The inside story of GM foods

www.bbc.co.uk/genes
Bitter Harvest tells the inside story of possibly the most powerful technology every developed - biotechnology - and the revolution it has
wrought on the food industry.

The first programme, Out of Eden looks back to San Francisco in 1972 and the first revolutionary experiments. First hand accounts tell how scientists dreamt of transforming the words, how industrialists saw the potential for the richest and most powerful global business, and how activists fought to stop them. Contributors include Professors James Watson, Stanley Cohen and Paul Berg, with Jeremy Rifkin and Earle Harbison, ex-Monsanto President.

Frostban, designed to protect fruit from frost, drew the first salvo from the protest groups. Andy Caffrey's Earth First group succeeded
in trashing the first crop of treated strawberries, but the farmer and his colleagues simply replanted them. Andy gave voice to public unrest. "When I first heard that a company in Berkley was planning to release this bacteria in my community," he says, " I literally felt a knife go into me. Here once again, for a buck, science, technology and corporations were going to invade my body with now a new bacteria that hadn't existed on the planet before. It had already been invaded by smog, by radiation, by toxic chemicals in my food, and I just wasn't going to take it any more."

Just a decade later, the Flavr Savr tomato went down in history as the first GM food to enjoy success. But while many farmers welcome help to produce trouble free crops, opponents argue that biotechnology does nothing to improve food and nutrition but is a cynical ploy to make money. The industry has flourished in the States, but will it dominate world agriculture in the 21st century? The next programme, Seeds of Anger, finds out what happened when GM grain arrived in Britain.

The background to GM food, the science and the controversy is found in detail on www.bbc.co.uk/genes, part of BBC Gene Stories.