Letter: GM fallout fears

SINCE EVERY major American seed company has been bought up by multinational companies such as Monsanto over the past dozen or so years ("In my own backyard", Review, 4 April), a handful of Americans have responded by forming heritage seed exchanges to preserve old varieties of plants that are not dependent on insecticides, fertilisers and weed killers produced by the new owners of the seed companies.

Scrambling the genes of plant and animal species that have taken millennia to evolve into distinct life forms compatible with each other and the environment places power that rightfully belongs to governments in the hands of the executives and boards of directors of a few multinationals whose allegiance is to their stockholders and perhaps their own personal aspirations.

BINA ROBINSON

Patterdale, Cumbria