There is an old saying : you are what you eat.

We all make choices every day about what we wear, the jobs we do and the friends we have. Choices which go some of the way to making us who we are. So we should be entitled to make one other basic choice: what we eat.

Annoyingly, the Government and the supermarkets are denying us that right.

We all know the depths of the furore over BSE. Now some are saying genetic modification of food could pose a far worse threat.

No one knows what ill effects, if any, GM food will wreak on us. Some say it could take up to three generations to find out. It certainly will take more than the scandalously low amounts of research currently undertaken.

So in the meantime are we supposed to sit back and accept what we are told? No. We do have a choice.

The Times applaud calls by Barnet's Liberal Democrat councillor Susette Palmer for a five-year moratorium on GM foods until we know more about what it means for our health and our environment.

Do not let yourself be used as a guinea pig for a scientific process which has not been properly tested.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000.Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.