GM crops tested

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

GM crops fail key trials amid environment fear
Two out of three strains 'should not be grown'

Paul Brown, environment correspondent

Thursday October 2, 2003
The Guardian [UK]

Two of the three GM [genetically modified] 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.

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Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine