UK politicians, academics and farmers yesterday rounded on Prince Charles, heir to the throne, after he claimed that a -global shift towards gen-etically modified crops would destroy the earth's environment. The prince, who started an organic food brand 18 years ago, argued in an interview with the Daily -Telegraph newspaper that increased global planting of GM crops would lead to "disaster". He said "clever genetic engineering" by "gigantic corporations" would "cause the biggest -disaster environmentally of all time". "If they think this is the way to go . . . we [will] end up with millions of small farmers all over the world being driven off their land into unsustainable, unmanageable, degraded and dysfunctional conurbations of unmentionable awfulness." But Phil Willis, chairman of the UK's all-party parliamentary science committee, said the use of science in farming had helped feed billions of people. "His lack of scientific understanding and his willingness to condemn millions of people to starvation in areas like sub-Saharan Africa is absolutely bewildering," he said. Des Turner, a Labour MP and member of the same committee, said the prince was behaving like a "Luddite". "Prince Charles has got a way of getting things absolutely wrong," he said. Meanwhile, Jim Dunwell, professor of plant biotechnology at the University of Reading, said the prince had "exaggerated" the negative consequences of GM technology. "I don't think the evidence base is there for the conclusions he's reached." Prof Dunwell pointed to new research from consultancy group PG Economics that identified economic and environmental benefits from GM technology. In a paper published this year in biotechnology journal AgBioForum the group concluded that farmers globally saved $6.9bn (