Secret GM trials threaten organic farms
21 June 2000
‘Secret’ GM trials threaten organic farms
By FWi staff
TRIALS of genetically modified maize have been taking place without the knowledge of neighbouring farmers, it is reported.
An organic farmer says she almost lost her organic status because she was unaware that GM maize was growing nearby.
There had been no notification in the local press that the trial was going ahead.
But the organisation running the trials says pinpoint locations of all the trial sites are freely available on a government website.
By law, trial sites for GM oilseed rape and GM beet must be announced in local newspapers, but there is no such stipulation for GM maize.
Notice is not required because forage maize has already achieved EU approval for safety, reports the BBC.
Organic farmer Janet Legge from Yark Hill, Herefordshire, said it was only due to a tip-off that she learned that GM forage maize was being grown nearby.
Dr Roger Turner, director of pro-GM industry body SCIMAC which runs the trials, defended the lack of local publicity.
He said that while there was no legal requirement for plantings to be publicised, SCIMAC had voluntarily agreed to provide grid references for the department of the environment website.
The Soil Association, which monitors standards in organic farming, said the same rules should apply to all GM crops.
Meanwhile, SCIMAC has claimed low turnouts in recent referendums on whether local GM trials should proceed show people are comfortable with the technology.
An official poll at Aldborough and Newton in North Yorkshire attracted 141 vote – just 14% of 999 parishioners eligible to vote.
Earlier in the month a ballot at Wivenhoe in Essex produced a 38% turnout, with 2139 the 5600-strong electorate voting.
And in a poll at St Osyth in Essex in May, only 25 % of the 3500-strong electorate bothered to vote, although SCIMACs earlier decision to pull the trial may have been a factor.
Dr Turner said: “Since the outset many people have felt that the trials are the way forward.
“The low turnout at these polls reflects that people do want independent scientific trials to go ahead.”
He said anti-GM campaigners have exaggerated levels of public hostility to the trials which were not borne by referendum turnouts.
But Sarah North, GM campaigner with Greenpeace, said the turnouts had been good, better than the turnout in local elections.
She said: “Ive been amazed that with people organising polls from their living rooms on shoestring budgets the turnout has been so high.”
Ms North said the poor Aldborough turnout may have been because “anger had turned to apathy as the crop had already been planted”.