Archived press release

Friends of the Earth Hits Out at Letter from GM Scientists

4 March 2004

Friends of the Earth today attacked a letter from scientists behind the Government's GM crop trials which claims that GM maize is better for the environment than conventional maize. Even though the chemicals used on most of the non-GM maize in the trials will shortly be banned, the scientists claim that GM maize will damage wildlife less than alternative herbicide regimes used on conventional maize. Friends of the Earth says their conclusions are "highly speculative" and based on insufficient data.

On Friday the Environment Audit Committee's report into the GM trials is expected to conclude that no GM crop should be given commercial approval until new trials are carried out.

The GM trials, or Farm Scale Evaluations (FSE), compared the impact on farmland wildlife of the herbicide regimes used on GM and conventional crops. The results, published at the end of 2003, appeared to show that GM maize was slightly less damaging to farmland biodiversity than growing conventional maize. But most of the non-GM maize was sprayed with atrazine and other related herbicides, which will be banned in the EU from 2006 because of their damaging impacts on the environment. So it is little wonder that GM maize was found to be less damaging in the FSE.

The letter is published in Nature, by a number of scientists involved with FSE's concludes that:

"We therefore expect weed abundances under future conventional herbicide management for maize crops to be considerably larger than that reported here for atrazine used pre-emergence (AE), but smaller than for the four sites analysed that used non-triazines alone."

The scientists' analysis of FSE sites where atrazine and the other triazine weedkillers were not used is based on only four samples, and in some cases just two. Consequently the authors were unable to provide separate statistical analysis for these sites because of the lack of data. The little data that is presented suggests that those herbicides which will continue to be in use post 2006 (after atrazine and the other triazine weedkillers are banned across the EU) showed a large variation in impacts - including less damaging impacts on biodiversity - and therefore any conclusions drawn are highly speculative.

Friends of the Earth will ask ministers who requested the new analysis, why, and who funded it.

Friends of the Earth's GM campaigner, Pete Riley said:

The scientific conclusions in this letter take statistics to the limit. They are highly speculative and are not backed up by sufficient data. The truth is that the FSE GM maize trials were flawed and cannot be used to justify the commercial development of GM crops."

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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust