He stared at her in disbelief. “But surely the tomato would have been tested first? These problems would have been seen and they would have stopped growing them.” A symphony of horns sounded behind them. The traffic had moved on and Li had not. He slipped the Jeep hurriedly in gear and lurched forward.

“You would think so, wouldn’t you?” said Margaret. “But the companies that put up the cash for research and development want their money back. And the scientists who developed the technology are so arrogant they believe that a technology which is only a dozen or so years old can replace an ecological balance that nature took three billion years to arrive at.

“So they are all prepared to ignore the evidence, or deny it exists. I mean, there’s already been one genetically engineered soybean found to cause severe allergic reactions in people who’ve eaten it. Then there was a bacterium genetically modified to produce large amounts of a food supplement that killed thirty-seven people and permanently disabled another fifteen hundred in the United States.

“Crops that have been genetically modified to resist herbicides and pesticides can pass on that resistance through cross-pollination, creating ‘super-weeds’ that simply beat the original crop hands down in the fight for space in the soil.

“Hey, and do you know what else . . . ?” Her nose wrinkled in disgust as she thought about it. “They’re now taking genes out of animals and fish and putting them into plants. A potato with chicken genes in it to increase resistance to disease. Lovely if you’re a vegetarian. Tomatoes with genes from a flounder—can you believe it!—to help reduce freezer damage. In some crops they’ve even used the gene that creates the poison in scorpions to create built-in insecticide.”

Li nodded. “It is a great delicacy in China.”

She looked at him, puzzled. “What is?”

“Scorpion. Deep fried. Eaten for medicinal purposes.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“No,” he said very seriously. “It is true. But I wouldn’t recommend them. They taste like shit.”

“Yeah, and I can just imagine how the toxin genes might make my porridge taste.” Her smile faded. “The thing is, all this is just the tip of the iceberg, Li Yan. Scientists are releasing modified bacteria and viruses into the environment in vast quantities through the introduction of genetically engineered crops. And they haven’t a clue what the long-term effects will be. Jesus, in ten years, it’s doubtful if there will be a single food left on the planet that hasn’t been genetically tampered with, and there’s not a damned thing any of us can do about it.” She took a deep breath. “And do you know why?”

“Why?”