Posted on 6-10-2003
GM
Crops Threaten Wildlife
Paul Brown, environment correspondent, October 3, 2003, The
Guardian
A threat to British wildlife from GM crops would be sufficient
grounds for
the UK government to ban the growing of such crops, the European
health
commissioner said yesterday, after the Guardian's report on
field trials of
the crops.
David Byrne was asked by MEPs on the European parliament's environment
committee whether a threat to biodiversity would allow Britain
to ban GM
crops unilaterally. He said it would but he had not seen the
results of the
three years of trials reported in the Guardian yesterday. Scientists
are
set to recommend to the government on October 16 that GM sugar
beet and
oilseed rape are not grown in Britain because insects and weeds
are fewer
in GM fields, further damaging Britain's depleted wildlife.
Speaking after the meeting in Brussels, Caroline Lucas, the
Green MEP for
south-east England said: "The commission is clearly beginning
to accept
that GM is a social and political issue - not simply an economic
one. "In
the face of mounting public opposition, and growing scientific
evidence of
the dangers posed by GM, the commission is reluctantly accepting
that it
must allow member states to reject GM crops."
Michael Meacher, the former environment minister who set up
the trials
while in government said: "It would be really unthinkable for
the Labour
government to give the go-ahead to these crops at this time.
They do not
have to say no forever but they can say not yet, not until a
lot more work
has been done."
The Liberal Democrat rural affairs spokesman, Andrew George,
said: "If
these leaks are proved accurate then the government will have
to face up to
decisions they may not have anticipated."
The director of Friends of the Earth, Tony Juniper, said: "This
must surely
be the death blow for commercial GM crops in the UK. GM crops
are
unpopular, unnecessary and pose threats to our food, farming
and environment."
It emerged yesterday that there may be a question mark over
the test
results for a third crop involved in the trials, forage maize,
which
appeared to do well in allowing biodiversity compared with conventional
farming. Maize fields are normally sprayed with atrazine, a
powerful
weedkiller. GM crops treated with the less strong glufosinate
ammonium did
better in wildlife tests. But atrazine has been banned as too
dangerous for
use on maize crops, so conventional farmers will have to find
a more benign
weedkiller. This could spark a call for the trials to be done
again using a
herbicide currently permitted for use on conventional maize.
The Royal Society criticised the Guardian report. Stephen Cox,
the
society's executive secretary, said: "Last week's report on
the GM public
debate stressed that the public wants confidence in the independence
and
integrity of information about GM, the assurance that it does
not reflect
the influence of any group with a special interest for or against
GM. "We
believe that the information in this speculative article, which
the
Guardian describes as a serious setback to the GM lobby, flies
in the face
of this plea from the public."
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