|
|
 
|
GM crops fail key trials amid environment fear
(Friday, Oct. 3, 2003 -- CropChoice news) -- Paul Brown, The Guardian, 10/02/03:
Two of the three GM crops grown experimentally in Britain, oil seed rape and
sugar beet, appear more harmful to the environment than conventional crops
and should not be grown in the UK, scientists are expected to tell the government next week. The Guardian has learned that the scientists will conclude that growing these crops is damaging to plant and insect life.
The judgment will be a serious setback to the GM lobby in the UK and Europe,
reopening the acrimonious debate about GM food.
The third crop, GM maize, allows the survival of more weeds and insects and
might be recommended for approval, though some scientists still have
reservations.
The results of the three years of field scale trials - the largest
scientific experiment of its type on GM crops undertaken anywhere in the
world - will be published next Friday by the august Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society. The results have been a closely guarded
secret for months, and will be studied by scientists, farmers, food
companies and governments across the world.
The study will include eight peer-reviewed papers about the effect of
growing GM crops and accompanying herbicides on the plants and animals
living in the fields around. The papers compare the GM fields with
conventional crops grown in adjacent fields.
The overwhelming public hostility in the UK to GM crops has not been shared
by scientists or the government but the results of the field scale trials
are expected to be a jolt to the enthusiasts. The Royal Society refused to
publish a ninth paper produced by the scientific group.
The Society's explanation was that the ninth paper was not a scientific
document but a summary of findings and in effect a recommendation to the
advisory committee on releases to the environment - the expert quango. The
scientists involved will now themselves publish this summary at the same
time as the other eight papers, concluding that two of the three crops
should not be grown.
The trials were set up four years ago by the former environment minister,
Michael Meacher, urged on by English Nature, the government's watchdog on
the natural world, which feared that the UK's already declining farmland
species might be further damaged by the introduction of GM crops.
A three-year moratorium on the commercial introduction of crops was
negotiated with the GM companies Monsanto, Syngenta and Bayer Bioscience
while the experimental field trials took place. Despite repeated attacks by
anti-GM protesters that destroyed many of the fields, the scientists decided
they had enough results to be scientifically valid. Experts not involved in
the trials had not expected definitive results even though hundreds of
fields were used.
The numbers of weed species and various types of spiders, ground beetles,
butterflies, moths and bees in fields of GM crops and the adjacent
conventional crop fields were counted to see if they showed marked
differences. All were treated with herbicides to kill weeds but the GM crops
were modified to survive special types made by Monsanto and Bayer.
The papers accepted for publication by the Royal Society show that in GM
sugar beet and oil seed rape the weeds and insects were significantly less
numerous. Spraying with the Monsanto herbicide glyphosate had taken a heavy
toll in the beet fields and the Bayer product glufosinate ammonium had wiped
out many species in the rape fields.
For maize the reverse appears to be the case. The reason seems to be that
maize fields are normally sprayed with atrazine, which kills weeds as they
germinate, and is an even more savage killer than the Bayer product. But the
result may be controversial because maize is particularly sensitive to
competition from weeds and yields may be down. Farmers in America found
glufosinate ammonium was not enough to kill competitive weeds and used a
second herbicide, further damaging biodiversity.
The political fall out from the trial results is potentially enormous. It
would give the government every excuse to refuse permission outright for two
of the three crops on environmental grounds. One of the two legally
watertight reasons for such a refusal is the environment, the other is
health. Almost all of northern Europe, with similar farming conditions,
would be expected to follow any British ban.
GM maize, grown in the UK as a fodder crop, may be given the green light
under strict guidelines, as a concession to the GM companies and the US
where a trade war looms. The US is threatening to take the EU to the World
Trade Organisation if the moratorium on GM crops is continued.
The government has other minefields to negotiate before GM crops can be
introduced. The agriculture and environment biotechnology commission is
still wrestling with the vexed question of distances required between GM and
conventional crops to avoid cross contamination and compensation schemes for
injured farmers if all goes wrong.
If contamination above 0.9% occurs in conventional crops it will have to be
declared and will be virtually unsaleable to food companies and all UK
supermarkets. For organic farmers the threshold is even lower at 0.1%.
The majority of the commission members believe that the biotech industry
should set up a fund with a levy on farmers growing GM crops to compensate
any conventional farmers whose crops lose value because of
cross-contamination. The biotech industry is wholly opposed to this.
The commission is also set to recommend a second statutory fund paid for by
the government to compensate farmers who lose organic status for the same
reason.
New legislation would be required to set up the schemes and enforce the
separation distances between crops. The legally enforceable separation
distances could be made larger or smaller in the future in the light of
experience.
The commission meets again in December by which time a draft of proposals
will be circulated. | |
