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- Shock admission that GM crops are already growing in the UK
- 2000
- Advanta admits separation distances in UK far closer than Canada
- Advanta to pay up
- Britain's babies back baby food ban
- Buy it from farmers' markets
- Buy your festive feast from local farmers
- Cadbury's admits its chocolate contains lindane
- Call for new biotech commission to halt spread of GM seeds
- Children get raw deal from Government
- Euro MPs fail GM Test
- Farm scale trials must be called off
- First UK organic beer festival held in Birmingham
- FOE responds to Prince Philip's confidence about GM foods
- Food Standards Agency could do better
- GM farm scale trial is useless
- GM farm scale trials threaten UK honey
- GM farmers pull out of trials
- GM scientist deserves sack says Friends of the Earth
- GM trials are a farce
- Government gambling with countryside
- Government in chaos over GM seeds
- Government in shambles over GM mistake
- Government prepares to decide commercial approval for GM crops before trial ends
- Government proposes to trash GM trials
- Hormone disrupting chemicals found in baby food
- Iceland to stock organic food at non-organic prices
- Illegal GM ingredients found in supermarkets
- Lindane is banned - nearly
- More GM crops set for Wales
- MPs debate new law on GM liability
- New fears over impact of GM crops on birdlife
- Public wants pesticides banned from supermarket food
- Scientists slam GM research
- Supermarket Real Food sham
- Top insurer says no to GM pollution cover
- Wales can ban GM
- Welsh agriculture secretary bottles out of Assembly decision on GM
- Aventis criticised by Government barrister
- Baby Blair greeted with hamper of Real Food
- Biosafety Protocol Agreed
- Biotech giant clams up at GM Seed List Hearing
- Call for pesticide tax
- Church advisers say no to GM crop trials
- Diners still worry about GM food
- FOE slams Krebs over organic food
- GM contamination inevitable admits Meacher
- GM food scare hits US taco lovers
- GM seed fiasco means farmers start to dig up crops
- GM-free diet for Iceland livestock
- Government GM policy in tatters
- Government set to give go-ahead to commercial licensing
- Hold on the milk says top scientist
- Kiss of death for GM seed
- Pesticides level rise in fruit AND veg
- Promising green speech from Blair?
- Shock admission that GM crops are already growing in the UK
- Supermarkets back organic farming bill
Shock admission that GM crops are already growing in the UK17 May 2000
GM crops have been growing in fields throughout the UK for more than a year. The Government confirmed that Canadian exporter Advanta Seeds sent genetically modified (GM) oilseed rape seeds to the UK, Sweden, Germany and France by accident. Both Sweden and France have ordered the farmers to destroy the crops and now the UK's Agriculture Minister, Nick Brown, has stated that farmers in this country will not be legally permitted to sell their crops in the EU.
In Britain around 9,000 ha was sown unwittingly by hundreds of farmers with GM seed during 1999 and another 4,700 in spring 2000.
However the Government, which has known about this fiasco for more than a month, only released details after the story broke first in Sweden. It has claimed that only one per cent of Advanta Seeds' imports contained GM oil rape seed, but has failed to give any details of total tonnage or where it is located.
"The Government is now making the outrageous claim that GM crops have been imported, sown and presumably harvested and sold commercially in the UK, but that this poses 'no risk to human health and the environment'," said Friends of the Earth Real Food Campaigner Adrian Bebb. "How can this claim be made, when finding the extent of any risk was supposed to be the whole point of the Government's farm scale trials programme?"
"Instead of coming clean the Government has sat on the truth for a month. Genetically modified food is a gigantic experiment with human health and the environment. The Government has lost control of the experiment altogether. Worse, it seems to have decided the results of the experiment before it has even been conducted. Yet again, the interests of the biotech companies have been put before the safety of the environment and the public."
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