DEFRA is planning secret GM test-fields to trial GM technology.

Almost all of the other 54 GM trials since 2000 have been vandalised - so now ministers are scrapping a rule which says the location of the trials has to be revealed on government websites.

All DEFRA wants to do is to investigate the technology - and they've promised to take a science-based approach to GM in their policy-making.

This seems fair enough to me!  

I don't see why crop scientists should fear being attacked - and if secrecy is the only way to protect the trials, I support it.

Lucy

  It seems fair enough to me too but the downside of not identifying where the GM trial sites are makes every crop trial a potential target. I don't condone crop trashing any more than lifting badgers but if DEFRA currently had to give a grid reference for all infected setts and discontinued because of illegal culling would that mean less badgers being taken or more?

  Surely a better way is to address the concerns. If last year where the GM potatoes were being grown side by side with a conventional crop the resulting harvest was to be fed side by side in a feeding trial it would probably not have needed a security fence.

  The bit of this press release that intrigues me (I trust the story is based on information from DEFRA rather than just repeating gossip in the Independent) is that DEFRA are planning their own trials – any further clues as to what crop that might be?

Well, DEFRA has told us that DEFRA would be granting permission to (and sometimes funding) crop scientists to plant the test fields - rather than planting them themselves.

But it's pretty intriguing - I have no idea what they'll trial next.

I have to say, I'm still in 2 minds on the whole GM issue, but if we are to feed, and potentially fuel, a wold population that is set to hit 9 billion by 2050, I think GM crops may become a nesseccary evil. (Although the word "evil" is probably a little strong too). As such, of course it is important to properly evaluate their potential ramifications and if the only way to do this is to keep them a little "hush, hush" then so be it.

The whole subject tends to get blown out of all preportions by raging eco-mentalists anyway, so the less they know the better! I'm a great advocate of the old addage "what they don't know won't hurt them!"

Good ole DEFRA.  Don't they posess a dictionary?  If they looked it up they would discover that secret means you don't tell anybody.  By anouncing 'secret' trials they are ensuring that the anti-GM lobby will, literally, be leaving no stone unturned in an effort to find them.

Hillary for Minister of War!

 Maybe they have found their dictionary Jacobus; according to the FG they now deny any secret trials.

http://www.farmersguardian.com/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=22670

  The FG also reported from the ‘Are GM crops fit for purpose?’ conference last week (no-one there from the FW?) where there were a couple of speakers who make GMOs in the lab more or less every day and when one said “GM crops pose an inherent unpredictability for health and the environment, its yesterday’s technology based on yesterday’s understanding of genetics” I give it greater credence than Hilary Benn’s bland claims that GM products are safe (‘products’ as yet unspecified and probably untested).

  The latest results from Vienna suggest some GM some crops in current use may be far from safe: http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_15588.cfm

Tom, it seems that DEFRA are now denying all knowledge (no surprise there then) but to quote Mandy Rice-Davies, they would say that wouldn't they.

re the Austrian study - a variety of GM maize causes reduced fertility in mice - if this is replicated in maize sent to the third world as US food aid you would think it would have shown up.  It could be considered a beneficial effect!

I don't think the government and proponents of the GM industry have thought this through properly.

I have to ask. How is running secret GM trials on farms or even, as has been suggested, on land inside secret military establishments such as Porton Down the government's military research establishment, going to increase public confidence in the development of GM crops?

Even Mandelson, the new business secretary, recommends caution "While technology determines what is possible, consumer demand determines what is economically viable. Public fears may be misplaced, but they cannot and should not be dismissed," he said.

To my thinking this is a knee-jerk response and proposed efforts to increase secrecy will only increase public concern in biotechnology.

I'm also concerned that in the public mind farmers as a whole are considered to be in support of GM crops and therefore risk alienating themselves from their customers - the public.

Branston pickle - the problem comes from the fact that everytime a GM trial has been carried out and its location be made public it has been trashed by eco-mentalists. No one is saying consumer concerns should be dismissed, but how can it be possible to prove that concerns people have over GM are unfounded or not unless succesful trials are allowed to take place? If we never get any results then we will never get a conclusive answer as to whether or not GM is safe.

It is a shame that DEFRA have had to resort to conducting the trials in secret, but if thats what it takes to get some results then i'm all for it.

I think the majority of people aren't anti-GM. But I do think they think: "Well, it could benefit the grower- but I'm just the shopper. If it doesn't make the product much cheaper, I don't want to take a risk with something new."

jdw

In terms of public acceptance of GM crops I don't know what the industry is hoping to achieve by conducting these trials.

For example, as a farmer I could produce horse meat as successfully as producing beef. I could even argue that horsemeat is safer, because it is not associated with BSE, but if I persuade the local butcher to display horsemeat in his window we will have the pony club rioting in the streets. Or again, on a more personal level, I don't like broccolli. I don't care how cheap it is or even how good it is for me - I don't like it.

This is not a new situation for farmers. There are many things we can produce on our farmers that people don't want to buy or consume - and no amount of trials are going to persuade people otherwise. So I would suggest that its our job, if we are to have a successful farming industry, to concentrate on providing what people do want - regardless of whether we think they are right or wrong.