Greenpeace's Stephen Tindale
GM crops and the farm scale trials
On 16 October the results of the four year Government programme of GM crop trials were published. They showed that while the growing of GM maize had seemingly no adverse effects on the environment, the intensive herbicides used with GM oil seed rape and GM sugar beet had significant adverse effects on the environment - decimating weeds and insects within the fields.
The farm scale trials were set up in 1999 by the then Minister for the Environment, Michael Meacher, when I was his special adviser. In truth, they were a political fudge, designed to hold the GM industry off from the commercial planting of these crops. The trials did not begin to address the possible catastrophic effects that GM commercialisation could bring about - for example if they interact unexpectedly with other crops or wildlife - and yet even within their limited scope, the trials still managed to show that the supposed benefits of GM just don't exist.
For years the GM industry has being saying these crops would reduce the use of weedkillers and benefit wildlife. Now we know this just isn't the case - indeed a separate piece of Government research has recently predicted that if GM sugar beet were commercialised in this country it would cause the total extinction of Skylarks within 20 years. Even the results for GM maize are questionable as non-GM maize is usually sprayed with the herbicide atrazine, which farmers in the US have been using on maize crops designed to be used with glufosinate. Atrazine has recently been completely banned by the EU because of its toxicity.
Now that claims from the GM industry has been shown to be untrue and people are realising they can't believe what these companies have been telling them. We shouldn't place the future of our food and our countryside in the hands of these corporations.
This is the Government's opportunity to ban the commercial planting of GM crops. The results of these trials give the Government the right to ban GM crops without breaking EU rules. They must take this opportunity and ban these risky and unpredictable crops that pose such irreversible risks to our environment.
