David Cooper, a professor of philosophy at Durham University, has co-edited three books on environmental issues, including Spirit of the Environment (1998).
‘Wonder bacteria will manufacture drugs and food supplements, while contributing to the production of cheese and other foods. They will be used to prevent frost damage to strawberries. Crops will be created to resist pests and diseases … Food products from wonder fish, cattle and poultry will also find their way onto the grocer’s shelves.’ These might have been predictions from a utopian tract by some 1930s technophile – H.G. Wells, perhaps, or J.B.S. Haldane. However, change the tense and replace ‘wonder’ by ‘genetically engineered’ and ‘grocer’ by ‘supermarket’, and you have an actual passage from a recent book, Eat Your Genes.’‘
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