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."