GM Crops Breeding With Many Plants in The Wild

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GM Crops Breeding With

Many Plants In The Wild

12-29-2

 

 

Alarming new results from official trials of GM crops are severely

jeopardising 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

focusedon the effects of different uses of pesticides on GM and non-

GM plants. But, after this was criticised, 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 con-

ventional 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 contemplate growing GM crops commercially.''

 

 

© 2002 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=365021