英国新闻听力 转基因食品（在线收听）

在欧洲以外，转基因农作物的培养比以往任何时候都昌盛，美国、印度、中国和巴西都在生产转基因食品。

Genetically Modified Food

REPORTER: When it comes to genetically modified crops, Europe is looking increasingly isolated. Outside Europe, more GM crops are being grown than ever before, with the U.S, India, China and Brazil all producing GM food. And now research scientists promise a new generation of genetically modified crops nutritionally balanced to feed the world and benefit the environment. If that's true, could they change the European opposition to GM food?

Try to sell anything with genetically modified ingredients at this north London farmers market and I can guarantee you won't make much money. The buzz words here are local, organic and natural. People want to know where their food comes from and they're suspicious of intensive farming, let alone GM crops.

FEMALE FARMER: It's horrible, you should never tamper with nature, I don't like the idea at all. It sounds as if they're doing experiments and horrible things just make the food go further and it's not…it's not natural to have thirty five crops of cauliflowers a year when it's a winter vegetable, you know.

MALE FARMER: Why bother? There is perfectly good food without having it genetically modified. Why take the risk?

ENGLISH WOMAN: No I don't know anyone that feels it's a good thing. I mean the part scientist do, you know, there's a lot of money involved and I'm always suspicious.

REPORTER: They are familiar sentiments and ones you'll hear right across Europe. I've been covering the GM food debate for more than ten years for the BBC and on the surface at least, the arguments don't seem to have moved on. But in this week's One Planet I'll be hearing how European consumers might be persuaded to learn to love GM crops and how the European Union is under pressure to relax its restrictions on GM technology.

HUGH JONES: So this is our main GM glasshouse, this suite. So each of these rooms contain a population of wheat plants, maybe a few hundred wheat plants each of which have got a different candidate gene; the gene that we're interested in researching.

REPORTER: To get an idea of the sort of new crops that are being developed, I visited the government funded Rothamsted Research set in Parkland, some thirty kilometers north of London. This is the UK's largest agricultural research center. Hugh Jones showed me around.

HUGH JONES: And this is a room that contains wheat engineered with a gene that we hope will prevent pre-harvest sprouting. A problem that occurs in some years where farmers find that in rare summers just before harvest the seeds start to sprout. They start to germinate like they should do when they're sown again in the ground but they start to do that while they're still on the ear and that then ruins their bread making qualities.

REPORTER: So really with wheat at the moment, a normal variety of wheat, you know a very wet season, you can get this problem where overgrowing becomes useless.

HUGH JONES: Yes, yeah and we've got a number of candidate genes where we think if we could either over express these or knock them out that we'll stop this happening.

REPORTER: Did people come here expecting it to look different somehow because it's a genetically modified wheat as opposed to just wheat.

HUGH JONES: Yeah that is often a reaction, this doesn't look like GM wheat because it looks perfectly normal but that very much depends on the genes that we have transformed with, so a gene that you might hope changes the pre-harvest sprouting effect isn't likely to be something you can see. Where as we have candidate genes where we can change the heights of plants for instance and then obviously you could tell the GM variety from the non GM.

REPORTER: Why do you need to genetically modify a wheat plant rather than just breed one conventionally, does it give what it want?

HUGH JONES: While, because conventional breeding is like taking two packs of cards where you shuffle together the packs of cards and then try to remove all the other cards except the one, the gene you wanted to move. GM is much more precise than that. We can take the one card out of one pack that we want to move, the candidate gene that we're interested in. And cut that gene out from its genome and then just move that one gene exactly from the start to the end into the new variety so that you know that you don't have any um, its called linkage drag. Other genes that you're bringing along with your candidate gene that might have poor qualities.

REPORTER: Now this is just one small greenhouse and you've got a long row of them. And in a long row just on the other side of the corridor I see more wheat plants. It looks like behind this glass right here there's even more wheat plants going on and on and on. And these are all for different things, you've engineered them to do different things. What sorts of things can you engineer a plant to do?

HUGH JONES: Well we've got a range of projects and we've, we are interested in bred making quality so as I mentioned earlier the business of that pre-harvest sprouting. We've also investigated the genes that make a stronger or weaker flower. The genes that are involved in making strong flower for bred making. We've got a project looking at salt tolerance, we've got genes that are involved in disease resistance, I mean what we're interested in primarily is understanding gene function. GM is a tool that we're using as research scientist to understand gene function and companies will use the same technology to make new varieties. We aren't in the business of making both of those steps in one go so we're really trying to understand what genes do and some of those genes will have important implications in making new varieties.

REPORTER: Hugh Jones at Rothamsted Research, one of the few places in Europe you're likely to find genetically modified crops. 

转基因食品

记者：谈到转基因农作物，欧洲似乎越来越被孤立了。在欧洲以外，转基因农作物的培养比以往任何时候都昌盛，美国、印度、中国和巴西都在生产转基因食品。现在科研人员承诺，新一代的转基因农作物营养均衡，有益于环境。如果这是真的，他们可以改变欧洲反对转基因食品的态度吗？

在伦敦北部的农贸市场，若是试图出售任何带有转基因成分的食品，我可以向你保证你赚不了钱。这里的流行语是本地的、有机的、和纯天然的。人们想知道他们食物的来源，他们对密集耕作持怀疑态度，更不用说转基因农作物了。

农妇：转基因食品很可怕，你绝不应该违背自然，我一点也不喜欢这种主意。听起来他们好像是在做可怕的实验，目的只是为了得到更多的食品……花椰菜属于冬季蔬菜，所以你可想而知，一年中有三十五次收成是明显违背自然的。

农夫：何必呢？无须转基因就有绝好的食品。为什么还要冒险？

英国妇女：我认识的人都不觉得这是一件好事。我是指科学家们改变的那部分农作物基因，你知道的，其中涉及大量金钱，我始终对此持怀疑态度。

记者：以上都是一些常见的情绪，在整个欧洲你能经常从人们口中听到。在英国广播公司，我已经做过十几年关于争论转基因食品的相关报道，至少从表面上看，争论似乎没有进展。但在这个星期的《同一个星球》节目中，我会陆续听到欧洲消费者如何被说服去接受并喜爱转基因作物，以及欧盟如何迫于压力放宽对转基因技术的限制。

休·琼斯：这里是我们主要的转基因温室，这一整套都是。每个房间里都培植一定数量的小麦植株，大约有几百株，每株上都有一个不同的实验基因，而这种实验基因就是我们研究的对象。

记者：为了了解目前正在研制中的最新农作物，我参观了帕克兰地区由政府资助的洛桑研究所，距离伦敦北部大约30公里。这里是英国最大的农业研究中心。休·琼斯带我参观了这里。

休·琼斯：这个房间里培育的是带有实验基因的小麦，我们希望这种基因能阻止收获期前发芽。收获期前发芽在有些年会出现，出现时的状况是种子在宝贵的夏季收获期到来之前开始发芽。此时种子在麦穗上，但却像刚种下去的时候一样开始发芽，这会毁坏淀粉积累的质量。

记者：现在正是普通小麦收获的季节，你知道这个季节很潮湿，这种问题有可能会出现，如果问题出现的话，即使小麦长得很茂盛也没有收成了。

休·琼斯：是的，我们还有许多候选基因，我们认为如果可以让这些基因特性显现出来，我们就能阻止这种情况发生。

记者：到这里的人们期待着它看起来有点不同吗，因为相对于普通小麦来说它毕竟是转基因小麦。

休·琼斯：是啊，这是人们通常的反应，这看起来不像是转基因小麦，因为它外型和普通小麦完全一样，但外型很大程度上取决于我们改变的基因，改变收获期前发芽问题的基因在小麦外型上不大看得出来。而我们的候选基因中有能够改变植物高度的基因，这样你就可以清楚地看到转基因品种和非转基因品种的区别。

记者：为什么要改变小麦的基因，而不用传统方法培育小麦，这能够满足小麦的需要吗？

休·琼斯：因为常规育种就像是把两副牌洗在一起，然后把除你想要的那张牌以外的其他所有牌都移走。转基因要精确得多。转基因就像是我们从一副牌中抽出我们想要的那张牌，即我们感兴趣的候选基因。然后将其从染色体上取下来，移到新品种上，这样做就不会产生任何的连锁累赘。即随候选基因一同移入的具有不好特质的其它基因。

记者：这里只是一个小温室，你已经在其中种植了很长一排小麦。我看到更多的小麦种在走廊的另一边。看来玻璃背后还有更多的小麦。这些都是为了达到不同的目的而被转基因的小麦。通过改变基因，你能够让植株有什么作用？

休·琼斯：我们现在有一系列的项目，我们对品质培育非常有兴趣，正如我刚才所说的阻止收获期前发芽的品质培育。我们也调查过使花朵更强壮或更虚弱的基因。使花朵更强壮的基因会用来做育种。我们有一个项目研究耐盐性，我们已找到抗病性强的基因，我的意思是我们主要对了解基因功能感兴趣。转基因是供我们科研人员了解基因功能的工具，公司也将使用相同的技术培育新品种。我们不可能同时做成这两件事，所以我们真正做的是了解基因功能，这些基因中有部分将对培育新品种起到重要的启示作用。

记者：感谢洛桑研究所的休·琼斯，这个研究所是欧洲少数几个培育转基因作物的地方之一。