Stephen Tindale is a research fellow at the Centre for European Reform. He spent six years as executive director of Greenpeace UK, which opposes GM crops. However, he has always thought that GM technology should be assessed case-by-case. He minimised campaigning on GM – never authorising direct actions against GM during his time in charge – and told Greenpeace’s campaigners to focus instead on how to make agriculture less environmentally-damaging.
The extract above is from this recent article, in which Tindale argues for just such a case-by-case assessment. Despite what he says, this does seem to be quite a turnaround.
You can see the problem for a Greenpeace director. If he had said what he really believed ten years ago, the flow of funds from the terrified public to Greenpeace would have dried up. So he kept mum; at best toned things down a bit (although not that much as these (1,2) statements from his time in office make clear). Then when he had flown the coop he could tell us the truth.