Posted on 1-6-2002

GE Fatal For Organics
By Geoffrey Lean Environment Editor, The Independent - London, 5-29-2

Organic farming will be forced out of production in Britain and across
Europe if GM crops are grown commercially, a startling new EU report
concludes.

The report - which is so controversial that top EC officials tried to stop
it being made public - shows that organic farms will become so contaminated
by genes from the new crops that they can no longer be licensed or will
have to spend so much money trying to protect themselves that they will
become uneconomic. Conventional non-GM farms will also be seriously
affected. Drawn up as a result of two years of studies in Britain, France,
Italy and Germany, it provides the most damning confirmation to date of the
arguments, long advanced by environmentalists, that it is not possible for
GM and organic farming to co-exist and that, as a result, shoppers will be
denied a choice of what to buy.

The conclusion is politically explosive because the demand for organic
produce is increasing rapidly across Europe, while consumer resistance to
GM food has forced supermarkets not to stock it. The Director General of
the EC's Joint Research Centre, which produced the report, submitted it
with a letter saying: "In view of the sensitivity of the issue, I would
suggest that the report be kept for internal use within the Commission
only." Publication of the findings is embarrassing for the Government. On
Friday the Prime Minister denounced GM opponents as using "emotion to drive
out reason".

The report - which follows a study by the European Environment Agency
warning that genes from GM crops will travel long distances, creating
superweeds - studies the effects of growing modified maize, potatoes and
oilseed rape commercially on several types of farms. It found that even if
only a tenth of a country or region was planted with them - far less that
the 54 per cent of Canada now under GM crops - keeping contamination at a
level that would allow organic farming to continue would be "extremely
difficult for any farm-crop combination in the scenarios considered". It
adds that when contamination occurred every year through "the wide-ranging
cultivation of GM crops" in an area "organic farms will lose their organic
status and face severe problems to grow their crops according to the
regulations given by the EU".

GM farmers would also be at risk, it added, because organic farmers might
well be entitled to compensation.

Yesterday, Adrian Bebb, food campaigner of Friends of the Earth, said:
"This report shows that if GM crops are grown in Britain farming will be
plunged into even greater crisis and consumers will be denied their
fundamental right to choose what they and their children will eat."