Peter Melchett - former Greenpeace UK Executive Director
The day began with Owen Davies QC completing his questions to Judith Jordan of Aventis. The jury heard that Aventis (formerly AgrEvo) were, along with Monsanto, members of SCIMAC, the supply chain initiative on modified agricultural crops. The SCIMAC document, seen by Ms Jordan, stated agreed buffer zone distances between GM and non-GM crops (that GM forage maize has to be at least 50 metres from non-GM forage maize, that GM sweetcorn has to be a minimum of 200 metres from non-GM sweetcorn and that there has to be 50 metres between GM and non-GM oil seed rape). Davies reminded Judith Jordan that she had yesterday stated that these distances were being reviewed by MAFF to see if they should be increased for rape and maize.
Davies repeatedly asked Jordan if she knew when the Scientific Steering Committee was formed for the monitoring and management of field-scale trials. He asked whether there was a Steering Committee in existence in May 1999 when the maize was planted at Walnut Tree Farm, and whether the Steering Committee could only have met for the first time in June 1999, and whether ﾓin relation to these crop trials the cart was being put before the horseﾔ. Ms Jordan was unsure about the precise date when the Steering Committee was set up, and said that in any event Aventis-AgrEvo had "part C clearance or marketing clearance", they "could have planted the entire country with herbicide-tolerant maize without telling anyone if we had wanted to do so".
In answer to Mr Farmer's following questions for the prosecution, Ms Jordan stated that she did not believe that Greenpeace had made any representations to AgrEvo about concerns about separation distances between GM and non-GM crops.
The prosecution then called on William Brigham, the farmer at Walnut Tree Farm, who had planted AgrEvo's GM forage maize. Brigham explained that he had seen an advertisement in a buying group newsletter for people to grow trial maize and had responded to this. He was to provide 2.4 hectares, or six acres, of land for this purpose, and was told of the 200-metre separation distances between GM and non-GM crops stipulated by SCIMAC. He explained that AgrEvo's control crop was 400 metres away from the GM trial site. Brigham agreed that he had received the letter from Peter Melchett following the public meeting in Lyng, and that two women from Lyng had expressed
concern about the growth of the crop, as well as an unnamed caller who said that "he didn't like it that I was growing them".
A video of the action was then shown to the court by the prosecution, the sound having been removed. This showed a mixture of footage taken by Greenpeace of the action, and also journalistic photography. Mr Brigham's brother's yellow digger was shown driving fast through the field and defendants were seen apparently running to safety; some peaceful arrests were also shown.
Mr Farmer then called Police Sergeant Michael Chipperfield of the Norfolk Constabulary to the witness box. Sergeant Chipperfield confirmed that he had arrived at Walnut Tree Farm on 26 July 1999 at 5.27 a.m. and had seen the chained gate, vehicles, people in white suits loading maize in bags on to a lorry and cutting down stalks. He said "the persons damaging the crop were asked
to stop - basically they didn't stop". Questioned by Owen Davies QC, Chipperfield confirmed that he had seen "no violence" at the scene and explained that "the most resistance was of a passive nature where people laid down when they were approached on some occasions". He agreed that he had
witnessed some damage to a journalist's car at the site.
This was the end of the evidence provided by the prosecution. Owen Davies QC then began to make the case for the defence. Davies emphasised the unusual nature of this case since 28 people were on trial at once and the issues surrounding the subject matter of the trial was genetic modification and genetically modified organisms. About the latter, Davies said "The scientists don't know all the answers and the politicans don't always get it right", giving the example of the BSE crisis. He described to the jury current concerns about the unpredictable effects of GMOs, and referred to
legitimately held beliefs by responsible people that "once genetic material is in the environment, it is or may be rampant - uncontrollable" and went on to explain that in trying to put a stop to this, the defendants had in fact been accused of criminal damage as if they had thrown a brick through someone's window.
Describing the defendants to the jury, Davies said that the jury might find that they would not expect to find any of them in a Crown Court, that the jury might find the defendants "responsible, peace-loving members of society who care very much about the environment". He said "What made them do it? This is what you are concerned with in this case." Davies described some of the misconceptions about Greenpeace and said that contrary to beards, sandals and lentilburgers, Greenpeace was a "highly efficient professional organisation with an extremely strict code of self-discipline", which offered solutions as well as protest.
After lunch, Mr Davies called Peter Melchett, Executive Director of Greenpeace, to the witness box as the first witness. Melchett confirmed that he had played a part in the events of July 1999 and explained that the intention had been to remove the entire crop, to bag it all up, and to transport it to AgrEvo's headquarters in Kings Lynn. He believed that the crop when it flowered would release genetic material into the environment and that once released, the contamination would be unstoppable because it consisted of living material.
Asked whether the action was a publicity stunt, Melchett explained that his intention had been to remove the whole crop and make it safe, and that he and others had prepared for this by acquiring the relevant machinery which was capable of such a task. The Greenpeace video had been taken simply to make a visual record of the event so that if anything was untruly alleged against
Greenpeace, this could be proved; to protect non-violent volunteers against violence towards them, and also to make the issue of genetic modification public and to show that there is opposition to GM field trials. Melchett explained that he had undertaken the action on the day in response to an interview with Mr Brigham in Farmers Weekly, saying that his crop was about to flower.
Owen Davies questioned Peter Melchett about where the issue of GM would come on a scale of importance of other environmental issues: he answered that "genetic modification is one of the, if not the, most dangerous" because its pollution is alive, unlike chemical pollution for example, and crucially capable of going everywhere.
Melchett explained that it was not a Greenpeace position to be opposed to genetic modification as a technology, that Greenpeace is an environmental organisation and that the concern is about damage to the environment. Therefore Greenpeace does not oppose GM being used to create new medicines
if the tests are done safely, and if people are choosing which medicine they take as an individual for their specific illness. Greenpeace would not be against GM tests if they were safely contained within a laboratory, but Melchett added that tests done in the open following initial lab tests of GM crops were not reassuring because of the unpredictability of the effects of GM in the open environment.
Peter Melchett then described the process of genetic modification as he understood it in the case of the forage maize in question. Initially, scientists identify a gene that they want to transfer because of its characteristics, eg tolerance to a herbicide, then the DNA from this gene would be transferred into
the crop via a method much like firing a shotgun, in which large numbers of the gene were fired at the plant in the hope that one would hit the correct target and make the desired change. He explained that two other genes had to accompany this initial gene - a marker gene (in this case an antibiotic-resistant one) which would make the "success" of the operation clear, and a promoter-enhancer
gene, which would aid the passage of the new gene into the plant's DNA - in this case a virus which infects the plant (cauliflower mosaic virus). Melchett added that his worry here was that genes do not exist in isolation and that the addition of one new gene had the potential to alter the relationship
between other genes and there was no means by which the final position of the fired gene could be guaranteed. Another central concern was that if genetically modified material was in everybody's food "nobody could avoid eating it" and that therefore "nobody has a choice about whether to run that risk".
