Posted on 3-10-2003
GM
Crops Fail Key Trials
Paul Brown, environment correspondent, October 2, 2003,
The
Guardian
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
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