The three-year governmental programme to trial genetically modified crops was heralded a “public relations disaster” yesterday, as the biotech industry refused to give way on the planting of herbicide-tolerant maize just three miles from Europe’s largest organic centre, the Henry Doubleday Research Organisation. The stance prompted an angry exchange between GM advocates and protestors.
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The Supply Chain Initiative on Modified Agricultural Crops (Scimac), a five strong scientific steering committee overseeing the trials and picking their locations, is adamant that the crops will be planted at the contentious site in Wolston, Warwickshire, and is prepared to defy both the organic protestors and the government.
The argument began when the main independent body on the committee, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), threatened to resign from the three-year programme if the biotech industry did not abandon the Wolston trial. The RSPB is the largest conservation charity in Europe overlooking the trials, which are meant to determine whether GM crops are harmful, positive or neutral to nearby wildlife.
Dr. Mark Avery, conservation director at RSPB, said: “Scimac is bungling the handling of these trials. To plant this crop is to seek a direct conflict with organic farmers and that just isn’t sensible, as it will undermine the public credibility of this research.
“The buck has to stop somewhere and it stops with Scimac. If Scimac wants the RSPB to remain associated with the farm scale evaluations then they must ensure that this GM crop is not planted at Wolston. If it is planted we quit.”
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By GlobalDataAvery told BBC online that: “Creating a public relations disaster, which Scimac seems intent on doing, will simply make it much more difficult for the scientific results to be taken on board by the public.
“We told Scimac we would resign unless Wolston was taken off the list, and they appeared pretty unmoved.”
Opposition to the trials, Scimac maintained, is prompted by “political and emotion reasons.” Spokesman for the committee Roger Thomas commented: “We cannot see the legal, technical or scientific justification for withdrawing this trial.”
Thomas added that Scimac has re-measured the land between the trial site and the nearest fields of the Ryton Organic Gardens and the distance is just further than 3km, and “the risk of cross-pollination over distances as large as three km is likely to be zero.” He said that the biotech giant Aventis was therefore abiding by guidelines set down by the UK organics standards body the Soil Association (SA).
Patrick Holden, director of the SA, argued however: “This is the forces of darkness deliberately trying to wreck organic agriculture by growing GM crops next to a centre of organic excellence. It is particularly scandalous that a body that has a vested interest in destroying organic agriculture should behave in this way.
“If there is the slightest chance of contaminating organic seed and so losing its status then the trial should be stopped. We have taken advice from the National Pollen Research Unit and experts there say a 6km zone should be applied. This is because the beehives on the Henry Doubleday site could cause cross contamination.
“There are sinister motives at work here. Once the GM industry can contaminate organic seed there is no going back. They know that and they see this trial as a way of doing it. If the RSPB refuse to take part the fig leaf of respectability falls away and the credibility of the whole crop trial goes.”
Environment minister Michael Meacher has also added his voice to the protestors, lodging an appeal with Scimac on 10 May to scrap the trial. Meacher has no legal power to oppose the trials however, and Professor Chris Pollock, chairman of Scimac and from the Institute of Grassland Research, rejected the appeal. Pollock argues that Meacher’s main motivation is canvassing votes in the marginal constituency of Rugby and Kenilworth, currently held by Labour’s Andrew King with a 495 majority.
In a letter to Meacher’s government department, Pollock said: “It is not within the SSC’s remit to consider withdrawing individual sites.”
Alan Gear, CEO of the Henry Doubleday Research Organisation, commented: “This is terrible news for us but we have not given up hope. Everyone round here is against this trial going ahead. We have received messages of support from all over the country. I hope that public opinion will prevail.”
