Posted on 25-6-2003
GE
Accidents Overshadow Plans
By Michael McCarthy
LONDON - Britain's growing row over genetically-engineered crops
will be
stepped up today with the news that "superweeds" have evolved
which are
resistant to the powerful weedkillers for which GE crops were
specially
designed.
The development, which comes as the sacked former Environment
Minister
Michael Meacher puts himself at the head of the anti-GE campaign,
will be
seized on by opponents of GE technology as undermining its whole
rationale.
It means that more weedkillers `not less, as the biotechnology
companies
have claimed' will be needed in GE crop fields, thus further
intensifying
the intensive agriculture that has wiped out a large portion
of Britain's
farmland wildlife in the last four decades.
Monsanto, the GE market leader, confirmed to the Independent
at the weekend
that its solution for dealing with resistant weeds was further
applications
of different weedkillers.
Coming on top of Mr Meacher's open accusation, in yesterday's
Independent
on Sunday, that Tony Blair, as a GE supporter, was seeking to
bury health
warnings about GE produce and "rushing to desired conclusions"
[about the
worth of GE] that cannot be scientifically supported", the news
about
superweeds will further intensify the GE debate.
It has been communicated to the Government by an American academic
specialist in weed control, who has posted a paper about it
on the website
of the official GE science review, headed by the Government's
chief
scientific adviser, Professor David King.
This will report soon, with an overview of GE science, in advance
of the
long-delayed decision, due this autumn, on whether GE crops
should be
commercialised in Britain.
The paper, by Professor Bob Hartzler of the Department of Agronomy
at Iowa
State University, reveals that in the last seven years four,
and perhaps
five, weed species have been found with resistance to the herbicide
glyphosate `which is best-known around the world under the Monsanto
trade
name Roundup
The resistance has come about not through gene transfer from
GE
herbicide-tolerant crops, as some have feared, but through natural
evolution.
Glyphosate is a "broad spectrum" herbicide, meaning that originally
`it
killed everything in the fields where it was applied, including
crops. GE
crops were specifically developed to be tolerant of it, so it
could be
applied throughout the growing season, keeping the fields weed-free,
and
two GE crops proposed for commercial growth in Britain, fodder
beet and
sugar beet, are glyphosate-tolerant. But now weeds have been
found in
Australia, California, Chile, Malaysia and various parts of
the US which it
cannot kill.
Dr Greg Elmore, Monsanto's US technical manager for soybeans
(one of the
largest GE crops) said at the weekend that Monsanto was taking
the question
of glyphosate resistance very seriously, and tackling it with
a series of
weed control management practices. With soybeans, he said, resistant
weeds
were controlled with a pre-planting "burn down" (killing of
everything)
with another weed killer, 2,4-D.
At least three of the resistant weeds had evolved in situations
where
glyphosate was being used with non-GE crops, he said, adding
that it was
far from the only weedkiller for which weeds had evolved resistance
some
herbicides had as many as 70 weeds resistant to them.
But Friends of the Earth's GE campaigner Pete Riley took a different
view.
"Companies like Monsanto have spun GE crops and their weedkillers
as having
less impact on the environment, but the fact of resistant weeds
undoubtedly
means more weedkillers, and means the impact on the environment
will be
greater," he said.
"These discoveries remove a central plank from the whole argument
for GE
crops in the UK."
The situation would worsen, he said. "As resistance spreads,
the complexity
and cost of weed control for farmers will both increase. The
overuse of
Roundup on GE crops provides the ideal conditions for resistance
to spread
from field to field. Roundup-resistant genes escaping from GE
crops via
split seeds and cross-pollination will add to these problems."
The intervention of Mr Meacher yesterday, with a TV interview
as well as
his Independent on Sunday article, is one of the most significant
events in
the whole five years of argument over GE crops in Britain.
Having left the Government, he is now free to be open with his
opposition
to GE commercialisation, and it is clear that he will be its
most
formidable opponent. This is not least as his article showed
because of his
mastery of the technical detail. As the long-time minister in
charge, he
has closely read and absorbed everything to do with the argument
that has
been published in recent years. Yesterday he listed a series
of reports and
findings suggesting that the full impact of GE technology was
still
dangerously unpredictable, saying that many of the health tests
carried out
were "scientifically vacuous".
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