The impressive Michael Meacher was on the radio this morning talking about GM crops. Nicky Campbell, who rarely impresses me, tried to sidetrack his arguments and paint him as a ridiculous figure by talking about his recent opinion piece in the Guardian which asked the question whether the US was merely overconfident in its own invincibility or deliberately negligent in the run up to 11th September 2001. Because Meacher dared ask this question, the media - either of its own accord or prompted by outside forces - took his comments out of context and suggested he was arguing that the US had deliberately ignored warnings prior to 11th September 2001 when in fact all he did was put the question. As a result of this, he is now considered a marginalised character, which undermines his valid points about the dangers of GM crops and the way the GM industry is trying to steamroller opposition to its new cash cow by suggesting it's perfectly safe without actually bothering to test whether or not it is.

The media's portrayal of Meacher in this way is sadly typical of the times we live in. It is far easier for us to take the media at face value and assume that everything he says is nonsense, that he's some kind of wacky conspiracy theorist. The harder part would be to listen to what he says and investigate whether or not he has a valid point. It's this complacency on our part that makes me wonder just how free we really are. I have always preferred organic food, and buy it whenever I can justify the extra expense, which is not as often as I'd like but more often than most. However, the GM industry would like to be able to foist its products on us without taking any safeguards about our health or the wider environment. In fact, if it had its way, GM labelling would be removed from all food so we would end up with no idea whether or not we were consuming it.

I grew up on a smallholding in the middle of Wales, which meant much of what we ate and drank was organic - milk directly from the cow, vegetables directly from the back yard and even our own meat. The complete self-sufficiency dream was proved impossible, but we supplemented what we grew with supermarket products. I've been blessed so far with good health, and I attribute much of this to my early diet. In fact, my latest dream - fuelled by discovering that you can buy 100 acres of woodland with a four-acre lake and five-bedroomed property in the wilds of Eastern Canada for under ?150,000 - is relocating somewhere where we could try to grow and produce more of our own food. Imagine my chagrin if I was to achieve that dream only to discover my next door neighbour started producing GM crops, which subsequently contaminated my own. I bet the legal system would be bending over to help me then... Not. It's strange how our much-touted freedom in the west can be so selective...