New analysis casts doubt on GM farm scale evaluations

26 March 2003

A new analysis by Friends of the Earth, highlighted in New Scientist magazine, suggests that the science and conduct of the Government-sponsored GM farm scale evaluations (FSE) will fail to provide any conclusive evidence on whether GM crops will do long-term harm to farmland wildlife.

Friends of the Earth based its analysis on materials already published, including the tender documents, minutes and interim reports by the research consortium that carried out the field work, and analysis of the results and the Scientific Steering Committee. The FSE results are due to be published in the autumn.

The main findings of Friends of the Earth's Science as a smokescreen report are that:

• Ecologically significant differences between GM and non GM crops may be missed
  because the experiment does not have sufficient statistical power.
  

• The scope of research was seriously limited by time and resource constraints.
  
• It may be impossible to detect any meaningful differences for some important indicator
  species.
  
• Monitoring of important soil organisms was dropped because of money and time
  constraints.
  
• Rare arable plants were excluded from the study because of time constraints.
  
• Modelling based on the results will be hampered by a lack of knowledge about interactions
  between different species, which food sources are preferred by which birds and mammals.
  
• Poor geographical distribution of the trials undermines the relevance of the results (eg 45
  per cent of maize is grown in the south-west region but only eight per cent of trials took
  place there).
  
• Advice on the use of weed killer on the GM crops was given by the companies who
  developed the technology, leading to concerns that the GM crops may have been managed
  to maximise biodiversity whilst ignoring the final yield.
  
• Evidence that in the United States additional herbicides are used to achieve the required
  level of weed control in maize crops has been overlooked, meaning the maize results could
  be irrelevant.

"We have published this report because we think it is vital that the public, farmers and the Government realise the limitations of the Farm Scale Evaluation results," said Friends of the Earth Real Food and Farming Campaigner, Pete Riley. "These studies, due out in the autumn, are incapable of providing adequate evidence that GM crops have no impact on wildlife. This is not the fault of the researchers - their hands were tied. The Government was not interested in properly investigating the long term impacts of GM crops, it wanted to avoid the threat of a moratorium. But they cannot expect the British public to accept that the future commercialisation of GM crops poses no threat to wildlife without the hard evidence."

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