-------- Original Message --------
Subject: GM Crops are Breeding with Plants in the Wild
Date: 31 Dec 2002 01:37:20 -0600
From: "Mark Graffis"

Published on Sunday, December 29, 2002 by the lndependent/UK
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 criticiz! ed, 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 contem! plate growing GM crops commercially.''
) 2002 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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