Britain to begin low-profile debate on release of GE crops

5.00pm - By MICHAEL McCARTHY

LONDON - Britons will get their first and perhaps only chance to tell the Government what they think of genetically modified crops and food from tomorrow with the start of a national debate on genetic modification.

Fears that GM technology may harm human health and the environment will be weighed against claims that it represents the way forward for farming and food in conferences, meetings and discussions across Britain - if enough people take part.

The debate has been unadvertised, only modestly funded and, some critics allege, organised with great reluctance by the Government. For an issue of this magnitude, its public profile is extremely low.

It comes in advance of the long-delayed decision on whether or not GM crops can be grown commercially in Britain, which is now expected in a few months.

The decision has been put off for four years while large-scale trials have been carried out of the powerful weedkiller associated with all four GM crops proposed for growing in the UK, to see if they cause extra harm to wildlife. The trials finish next month and the results will probably be published in September.

Tony Blair and some ministers, such as Lord Sainsbury, the science minister, are known to be strongly in favour of GM technology. But when the controversy was at its height in 1998 and 1999 there were widespread protests against it led by environmental pressure groups, and the major supermarkets decided to go (and have remained) GM-free.

A poll published in the Independent a month ago revealed that a majority of the public remained solidly anti-GM. The poll showed that those in favour (14 per cent) were outnumbered four-to-one by those against (56 per cent) with 30 per cent undecided.

The debate will tap directly into these feelings and present them officially to the Government for the first time. It will thus go some way to assuaging one of the main political problems with the GM issue, the "democratic deficit".

Authorisation of the release of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is decided in Brussels, on an EU-wide basis, but the legislation governing it was very narrowly framed on questions of the immediate risk from individual GMOs to humans and the environment. Wider fears since expressed by large numbers of people - that they might not be able to avoid GM products even if they wished to, that the technology might make organic farming unviable because of contamination, that it is in essence unnatural and irresponsible - were not accommodated.

These and other concerns can now be brought to the Government's attention in the debate, which is entitled "GM Nation". It will last six weeks and is based around a series of six main regional conferences, which start tomorrow at the NEC in Birmingham. The others will be in Swansea (June 5), Taunton (June 7), Belfast (June 9), Glasgow (June 11) and Harrogate (June 13).

They will be followed by smaller local meetings organised by county and local councils, pressure groups and individuals. A debate "tool kit" of a handbook, a videotape and a CD-Rom has been produced to enable anyone to organise their own version of the debate, wherever they choose, with a telephone helpline.

The debate will be launched tomorrow by Professor Malcolm Grant, chairman of the Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission (AEBC), the Government's GM farming advisory body. The AEBC called for the debate nearly two years ago, contending that the grounds on which the Government proposed to make its GM-commercialisation choice were far too narrow.

Professor Grant, a planning expert who is a former professor of land economy at Cambridge University, has promised that he will take account of public opinion in his report to the Government. It is far from clear, however, that the Government will take it into account when making its decision. Asked if she would do so, Margaret Beckett, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who is believed to be a strong supporter of GM food, merely says that she will "respond publicly" to Professor Grant's report.

The issues dividing supporters and opponents of GM centre firstly around risk. Those pressing the GM case, including the mainly American, agri-business giants that have developed the technology and stand to reap billions of dollars from it, their supporters in the US government, and a fair number of scientists, say there is little or no risk.

Those calling for a halt to GM, led by environmental and consumer pressure groups and including a large section of the public, say there are real potential risks to human health and the environment.

The Royal Society recently discounted risks to human health, saying there was "no credible evidence" that people's health could be affected by eating any GM products. Environmental fears, however, are more solidly based, with the Government's wildlife adviser, English Nature, expressing concern that the introduction of weedkiller-tolerant GM crops may be a further intensification of modern farming methods that have already damaged the countryside enormously.

There is another dispute over whether or not GM represents a solution to hunger in poor countries by increasing crop yields. The GM companies claim that it does but last week a major development charity, Action Aid, dismissed the idea, saying that "there is no evidence that GM will help solve world hunger".

Finally, there are two more recent concerns which some observers now believe will be crucial in deciding the fate of GM in Britain: co-existence and liability.

Opponents say that the contamination of other crops in the area by GM plants, which all sides accept can happen, will make it impossible for organic and conventional but GM-free farming to co-exist alongside GM agriculture. Supporters deny that this is the case.

The other issue is about who will pay compensation if, for example, an organic farm is driven out of business by a GM farm near by. This is so far undecided, but the AEBC is working on guidelines for both issues. The guidelines are expected to be published soon.


The farm-scale trials explained

It's not about funny food, it's about worse weedkillers.

The fear that has held up the commercialisation of genetically modified (GM) crops in Britain for four years is not in any way about eating GM produce.

It is about the potential effect on wildlife of the extra-powerful herbicides that all four GM crops currently intended for planting in Britain have been genetically-engineered to tolerate.

These chemicals - Monsanto's Roundup and Bayer's Liberty are the best-known - are "broad-spectrum" herbicides, which means they are so deadly they kill every plant that they encounter. Their previous use was to clear fields entirely - they could not be used in the growing season, as they would kill the crop plants themselves.

But with GM crops developed that can take these weedkillers, they can be used throughout the year. And the fear of the English Nature, the Government's wildlife advisory body, is that the insect, plant and bird life that has been enormously damaged by four decades of intensive farming, in which chemical weedkillers and pesticides have played a leading role, will be damaged even further.

With GM herbicide-tolerant crops, they fear, there will be nothing left at all in the farmer's fields but the crop - it will be "green concrete".

In 1999 English Nature persuaded the government to carry out a four-year programme of trials to see if the GM crops and their weedkillers really did make things worse for wildlife. The GM companies agreed to a planting moratorium while this was done. The trials were carried out on a large scale ("farm-scale") across the country, eventually at 263 sites for four crops (fodder maize, beet, and winter- and spring-sown oilseed rape). They matched the weedkiller regime of the GM crops against that of conventional crops, and compared the effect on plants, insects, snails and other small lifeforms, of both.

Some anti-GM campaign groups protested against the trials themselves, saying they risked the escape of GM genes into the environment. A number of attacks on trial sites were made by activists, the most celebrated being that by Lord Melchett, executive director of Greenpeace, and 27 other Greenpeace members, on a Norfolk farm in July 1999.

Lord Melchett and his colleagues were arrested and charged with criminal damage, but they were later acquitted by a jury at Norwich Crown Court.

The trials will finish in July when the last crop of winter-sown oilseed rape is harvested. The results will then be analysed, peer-reviewed, and published by the Royal Society.

If they show real increased harm to the environment, the Government could halt the commercialisation of GM crops in Britain, despite the fact that one crop has already been authorised for release by the European Union, and the other three are close to their authorisation.

- INDEPENDENT