In spite of European Union restrictions that seem draconian to North American producers, the Blair Government is under pressure to do more to protect the same people who shrugged off Hitler's buzz bombs from tomato paste that the other side of the Atlantic Alliance is happily eating. Although Australia has pure food laws that are generally effective and trusted, we come late to the task of specifically regulating genetic modification as such. This, however, we are about to embark upon. Because plants must protect themselves against their predators, much of what we eat, if ingested in sufficient quantity, would kill us. We therefore live with poisons and it is only prudent to be cautious about what we eat.
Anxiety is a survival mechanism.
People who start at every hare, squandering nervous energy and attention upon low-probability risks become, however, victims of their own neuroses. Perhaps some folk actually enjoy states of heightened anxiety, but their misplaced fears must engage resources that would otherwise be devoted to reducing the hazards that appreciably shorten lifespan or, and this may be worse, make long lives less worth living. They suffer wildly disproportionate fears of the unfamiliar. In short, they possess traits that afford a ready market for the hysteria and nostrums of the scare-mongering industry. So mankind peppers itself with dire predictions and always has.