Archived press release

New study highlights GM fears

29 November 2004

New research released today indicates that it will extremely difficult for conventional crops to exist without GM contamination if GM crops are commercialised, said Friends of the Earth.

The Bright project, part-funded by the biotech industry, examined different rotations of GM and non-GM herbicide tolerant winter oilseed rape and sugar beet, and was set up to look at herbicide use and weed control. It also examined issues around cross-pollination of oilseed rape, and the survival of GM oilseed rape seeds in the ground after the crops had been harvested.

The results appear to confirm fears that, if released commercially, GM crops will be difficult to control and will cross-pollinate with non-GM crops. This could pose a real threat of contamination for conventional varieties. For example, the study found that

• Large numbers of GM oilseed rape seeds were dropped at harvest, with on average 1000 per m² surviving in the soil. As a result, GM plants would be likely to grow again in the same fields along with other crops in subsequent years.
• Over the course of just four years, the different herbicide tolerant oilseed rape crops used in the trials bred to produce seeds with "combinations of herbicide tolerance". These plants could lead to farmers having to use stronger, or combinations of, weed killers if they wanted to get rid of them.

"This new research highlights yet again the risks of allowing GM crops to be grown commercially in the UK. Conventional oilseed rape would be threatened with GM contamination, and GM `superweeds' could add to problems for farmers. It is little wonder that GM food and crops are so unpopular. It is high time the biotech industry abandoned its plans to grow GM food in the UK. The Government should stop supporting GM crops and concentrate on sustainable methods of farming instead."

"This new research should offer little comfort to the biotech industry. Any suggestion that it could be used to push the case for GM commercialisation would be clutching at GM straws, and would ignore the study's limited scope, and the very real problems that it has thrown up.”

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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust