Greenpeace activists arrested for removing GM crop
Mr Farmer, counsel for the prosecution, continued cross-examining Peter
Melchett this morning, asking about a letter to Ms Glenda Townsend of MAFF
from Sarah North of Greenpeace's GM campaign team dated 27 June 2000.
Counsel suggested that Greenpeace had offered no alternatives to the "safe
distances" which were to separate GM from non-GM crops. Peter Melchett
agreed that this was the case because Greenpeace believed there should be no
GM material released into the environment at all due to the risks of
contamination.
On re-examination, Owen Davies QC reminded Peter Melchett of some things
that had been said at the public meeting in Lyng, using the full transcript of it
which had been made with a tape recording of the meeting by Jo Page and
Karly Graham. Peter Melchett read out the first paragraph of the speech he
had made there: he had said of the crop at Walnut Tree Farm, "It should be
destroyed. It should be destroyed as quickly as possible. It should be got rid
of." The response to Peter Melchett's speech, as noted in the transcript, had
been long, loud clapping.
Owen Davies QC then referred back to Sarah North's letter and it was read out
in court. It included the following two paragraphs: "Greenpeace believes that
there should be no releases of GM crops in the open environment because of
the uncontainable nature of this technology and risk of contamination of non-GM
produce. As I am sure you are aware, the John Innes Centre stated in a
report written for MAFF (May 1999) that "Once GM crops are released, they,
like all crops, cannot be completely contained." This month Michael Meacher
also endorsed this view when he stated, "It is false to pretend that any
distance will prevent contamination: the question is how can we minimise that
to a level that is acceptable to those buying the produce because they will have
to determine what degree of GM food in a non-GM product is acceptable."
(References for both statements were included).
The letter had continued, "The only way that the UK makes this compromise
workable is to adopt a position that some level of GM contamination will have
to be accepted by consumers. This moves the debate away from the concept
of ﾑGM-free' to one of ﾑtolerance levels'. In the eyes of Greenpeace, non-GM
consumers and those non-GM farmers and retailers, such a compromise is
unacceptable."
Judy Khan, counsel for the defence, then called Andy Tait to the witness box.
Andy is an assistant campaigner in Greenpeace's GM team, who has worked for
the Body Shop, the Citizens Advice Bureau and as a drug rehabilitation worker
before working for Greenpeace.
He testified that he was first made aware of GM as an issue in 1996 when
shipments of GM crops grown in the USA had first arrived in the UK. He got
involved in local campaign work - handing out leaflets at supermarkets and
talking to consumers and managers about what they thought about GM
material in the products being bought and sold. His concerns were increased
with the news that the American product ﾑApache' organic tortilla chips (made
from maize) was found to be contaminated with GM material from a
neighbouring farm.
Of the day of the action, Andy explained that he had been approached by a
colleague, and having thought about the impending flowering of the GM maize,
he was convinced that action must be taken. In his statement to police after
arrest, Andy had also expressed concerns about horizontal gene transfer. Of
the events at Lyng in the context of other GM field trials, Andy told the jury, "It
is better to stop one thing, than to stop nothing." Taking that kind of action
was better than taking none at all.
Asked by the prosecution to compare GM medicine tests with those for GM
food, Andy said that these were not comparable since the former were far more
stringent and contained. When asked whether he might ever be shown to have
been wrong in his belief about GM technology, Andy said, "I don't know of
anybody who could categorically say that GM technology is safe."
Spencer Cooke was then called to the witness box by Owen Davies QC. A
researcher with Greenpeace, Spencer had a degree in applied biology with
majors in ecology and agriculture which included some genetic engineering
such as it was ten years ago. He confirmed that he was responsible for
researching the area around the Lyng site as well as other farm scale sites.
Copies of the working map that he had produced in doing this were provided to
the jury, and Spencer showed the position of the Lyng trial site as well as a
nearby organic farm, which was five or six miles from the trial site. The Soil
Association required a minimum distance of six miles between an organic farm
and a GM trial site for the farm to retain its organic status. Spencer
emphasised that contrary to Judith Jordan's testimony, Friends of the Earth had
indeed detected genetic material in honey that had been contaminated by GM
pollen. He then told the jury that a GM field such as the one at Lyng was now not as economically viable, giving the example of Tesco's refusal to buy any
food grown on such a field.
Spencer told the jury of visits to the site and of the taking of small samples
that were tested for polymerated chain reactions (PCR) which were caused in
the leaves by the addition of the new gene. He then explained that despite
crop rotation, some harvested fields of maize and sweetcorn have cobs left
behind which either decay or get eaten by animals, another way of spreading
genetic pollution. He told the jury that a six-acre field of GM forage maize
would produce billions of grains of pollen, many of which would fall on the soil
and, via the ﾑviable promoter' inserted with the added gene, genetically
modified material could "move through the soil".
The prosecution asked what Spencer's motive was for taking part in the events
at Lyng; he replied "that pollution had to be prevented and this was the only
way that we could do it."
The trial continues.
