Soya - a crop widely affected by GM
Today was the last day of evidence with the testimonies of the six remaining
defendants. There will be no court proceedings tomorrow (15 July). Court
resumes on Monday 18 September.
Joanna (Jo) Melzack was the first defendant of the day to testify. She has a
degree in English and trained as a teacher with experience in teaching and
anti-racist and multi-cultural curriculum development at various levels of
education. Since 1995 she has been working as Network Developer (North)
with Greenpeace working to recruit, support and develop the skills of
Greenpeace volunteers. In her recruitment of volunteers for this action, she
was concerned that those invited should be NVDA (non-violent direct action)
trained, either experienced or calm and aware of Greenpeace's core values,
and very concerned about GM contamination.
Having spent the last 25 years living with a pharmacist, Jo explained that she
had developed a great scepticism about the surety of some scientists. At
Walnut Tree Farm, Jo collected up cut maize stalks and bagged them up, later
trying to break down stalks once the mower had been disabled. Her aim was
to stop genetic pollution - although it is invisible - escaping into the
surrounding fields. She told the jury, "I did find myself in an extreme
situation, but the risk was unacceptable and sometimes you find yourself
smashing or breaking something in order to protect something else."
Martin Porter was the next to testify.A social worker with a BSc in physics and
astrophysics and a diploma in social work, he is a Greenpeace Area Networker
for North Yorkshire.
Martin told the jury that "science advances in various ways and that in terms
of the methodology of a scientific experiment, you need to know your
methodology before you start the experiment - the Committee that was going
to decide how they were going to run the field-scale experiments didn't meet
until July 1999 and didn't publish their guidelines until late 1999." Martin said
of the GM trial at Lyng, which had been planted in spring 1999, "I don't think it
had scientific value or monetary value - perhaps it had some political value."
He told the jury that the GM maize at Lyng couldn't be sold, swopped or
exchanged for anything else, and was scientifically non-viable, adding, "unless
the farmer grows ornamental maize, I can't see what value it had."
Judy Khan then called Malcolm Carroll to the witness box. Malcolm has been a
Baptist minister for twenty years and is currently working for the Church of England, helping churches and community groups and working on social action
reports.
Malcolm told the jury that he had been involved with many Greenpeace
campaigns about GM and had attended a public meeting in Telford in 1999 with
70-80 others, regarding this issue. The panel had included Richard Powell of
Novartis, Pete Riley of Friends of the Earth and a representative of Genetix
Snowball. The four important moments for Malcolm during this meeting were:
i) the Novartis representative telling the audience that GM and organic crops
cannot co-exist, that there was always going to be some contamination from
the former to the latter;
ii) questions put to the ethical adviser to Church Commissioners, also on the panel, about whether church land would be devalued if trials were to take place upon it;
iii) the concern an organic farmerexpressed about the fact that the organic farm run by her family since the early 1950s would be devalued by GM contamination;
iv) a bee-keeper stating thathe was aware that bees could travel up to five miles, thus causing contamination.
Owen Davies QC then called Adrian O'Neil to the witness box. Currently
working on a farm and tending a large garden for an elderly couple (with plans
for after the trial to manage a nature reserve), teaching conservation skills to
prisoners on long-term sentences, people on community service and children
with learning difficulties. Adrian has been active with Greenpeace for two and
a half years and told the jury that he had been an Area Networker for two
years. He is also involved with Friends of the Earth and ActionAid. He holds a
BSc in countryside management from agricultural college.
Adrian O'Neil told
the jury he had been trained as a 'True Food communicator', and had helped
the True Food campaign to go through all democratic processes short of direct
action, via supermarket tour guiding, presentation giving and public speaking
at meetings. He first became aware of the issue of genetic engineering during
his studies and was aware of the proposals to hold field-scale trials at this time.
He explained, "The more I learned, the more I came to the position that the
idea of field-scale trials was absurd; they seemed to fly in the face of common
sense. As far as I was concerned, the more I read, the more I became
frightened about the future - of what it holds."
After lunch Judy Khan called Jacky Westwood to the witness box. A beauty
therapist and fitness instructor, Jacky has been a member of Greenpeace since
the early 1980s and was an Area Networker for two and a half years. When Jacky learned of the field-scale plantings in 1999, she told the jury she
"absolutely could not believe it" and realised at the Greenpeace briefing before
the action that these trials were in fact not testing for things such as distances
travelled by GM pollen and the effects of the GM crops on soil. This led her to
believe of the Walnut Tree Farm case that "It wasn't a trial at all." She told the
prosecution, when asked whether she felt that she was protecting property via
her actions of 26/7/99: "If there was no interest in how far the pollen spread,
then there was no interest in where the pollen would spread to."
The last defendant to testify was Chris Holden who at the time of the action
was completing a BSc in biochemistry with medical biochemistry, and is
currently employed in industrial rope access. Chris Holden explained to the jury the mechanics of horizontal gene transfer using the analogy of a family tree: usually genetic information flowed down thefamily tree but with horizontal gene transfer the genetic information passed notonly to offspring but to other organisms that the contaminated one met. He told the jury that horizontal gene transfer was particularly prone to occur via viruses and bacteria.
Of the Government's field-scale trials, Chris said that the stated aims of the
research - to assess the impact on biodiversity with a different herbicide
regime - were to be taken issue with since the design of the experiment would
not answer the questions implied by these aims. The research was to
concentrate on the use of one crop in one year, but not what happens if the
same fields - or others - are used for the growth of a succession of different GM
crops. His other concerns included the effects of GM pollination, movements of
parts of vegetable matter via animals and insects, and horizontal gene transfer.
He had discovered after the action that AgrEvo's crop at Lyng was to be
'destroyed' by chopping it up and ploughing it into the fertile soil of the field.
He explained that there was no better way than this of ensuring the occurrence
of horizontal gene transfer, and there was absolutely no way that this could be
contained.
