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Department of Trade and Industry

The hon. Gentleman mentions the media, and I want to question whether he is right to say that the problems of GM acceptance were due to scientists sitting around at dinner parties and not doing anything else. It seems to me that once the media had decided to treat GM as they did, nothing could have been done. Although some preparatory work could have been done, the problem lies much more with the media than with a failure of scientists in that case.