http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1229-06.htm
Published on Sunday,
December 29, 2002 by the lndependent/UK
GM Crops are Breeding with Plants in the
Wild
by Geoffrey Lean
Alarming new results from official trials of GM crops are
severely jeopardizing Government plans for growing them
commercially in Britain.
The
results, in a new Government report, show - for the
first time in Britain - that genes from GM crops are
interbreeding on a large scale with conventional ones,
and also with weeds.
The report
is so devastating to the Government's case
for GM crops that ministers last week sought to bury it
by slipping the first information on it out on the website
of the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
(Defra) on Christmas Eve, the one day in the year when no
newspapers are being prepared.
Even then, the department
published only a heavily edited
summary of the main report. Unusually, the full report,
which will contain much more devastating detail, was
withheld from publication on the website. Defra said
it was available on request, but when The Independent
on Sunday tried to ask for it last week, the department
said no one was available to provide it.
The report, the result
of six years of monitoring of
GM crops in Britain, is particularly politically explosive
and it gives the first results from the official farm-scale
trials, which ministers have been running to test the
suitability of growing GM crops in Britain.
The Government has
repeatedly said that the results of
the trials would settle the question of whether GM crops
endangered the environment but - perhaps because it knew
what the research had found - it has been downplaying
their significance in recent weeks.
The trials - originally
set up to buy time in the face of
strong public hostility to the crops - were not designed
to look at the possibility of genes from GM crops contaminating
nearby plants, but focused on the effects of different uses
of pesticides on GM and non-GM plants. But, after this was
criticized, studies of this "gene flow'' were bolted on.
The report covers true
studies carried out between 1994 and
2000 by the National Institute of Agricultural Botany and the
Laboratory of the Government Chemist. It shows that genes
from
GM oil seed rape, specially engineered to be resistant to
herbicides, contaminated conventional crops as far as 200
yards away.
Equally alarmingly,
GM oil seed rape that escaped from a
crop harvested in 1996 persisted for at least four years,
until studies ended in 2000.
In
another case, the report adds: "It was found that some
combine harvesters were not cleaned after the harvesting of
the GM crop,'' and "subsequently flushed out'' the GM seed
on to ground intended for conventional crops "causing
contamination of this field.''
Most worryingly
of all, the report shows that the GM crop
readily interbred with a weed, wild turnip, giving it
resistance to herbicides and thus raising the prospect
of the development of "super weeds".
The report concludes
that the research "indicates that
commercial-scale releases of GM oil seed rape in future
could pollinate other crops and wild turnip''.
Other studies from
elsewhere in the world have shown that
interbreeding occurs, and English Nature, the Government's
wildlife watchdog, has said super weeds will "inevitably''
emerge in Britain if GM crops are grown commercially.
In a commentary also
published by Defra on Christmas Eve,
the official advisory committee on releases to the environment
said that the contamination was "entirely within expectations''.
The
committee added that "in itself'' gene flow did not
constitute a risk to the environment. But Pete Riley of
Friends of the Earth said the results showed that if
GM crops became widespread, almost all similar crops
would inevitably become contaminated, severely threatening
organic agriculture. He added: "It is not surprising that
the Government has tried to cover up this report.
"It shows that
we need to know a great deal more about
these issues before we even contemplate growing GM crops
commercially.''
© 2002 Independent
Digital (UK) Ltd
###
