GM Crops Fail Key Trials Amid Environment Fear

[Mike Friedman <mikedf@xxxxxxxx>]

The Guardian (UK)
October 2, 2003

GM Crops Fail Key Trials Amid Environment Fear

Two out of three strains 'should not be grown'

by Paul Brown

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 Organization 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.
--
Michael Friedman
Ph.D. Candidate in Ecology, Evolutionary Biology and Behavior
City University of New York

Molecular Laboratory
Department of Invertebrate Zoology
American Museum of Natural History
Central Park West at 79th Street
New York, NY  10024
(212) 313-8721


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