GM crops 'harm wildlife'
2005-03-22 07:38
London - The largest study to date conducted on genetically modified (GM) crops has concluded they can harm wildlife, setting the stage for a fight in Britain over whether to allow farmers to cultivate engineered crops.
The last trial in a four-year study, published on Monday, compared GM winter-sown oilseed rape to its conventional non-GM equivalent, and found that in GM fields there were fewer seeds, bees and butterflies.
The rapeseed, like many other GM crops designed by agro-industrial corporations, is designed to resist herbicide so that farmers can use a broad spectrum of powerful weedkillers.
In the GM crop's fields there were also fewer broad-leaved weeds - considered important because they feed insects - even though there were some grass weeds and soil insects remaining.
The results were the last of four major farm-scale trials overseen by the environment and rural affairs ministry's Scientific Steering Committee, which took four years, involved the collection of one million weeds and two million bugs, and cost about six million pounds.
'Another major blow'
Environmental groups immediately hailed the findings as proof that GM crops were harmful to the environment and should be banned in Britain, where they face major public hostility.
"These results are yet another major blow to the biotech industry," said Clare Oxborrow, the GM campaigner for Friends of the Earth.
"Growing GM winter oilseed rape would have a negative impact on farmland wildlife," she said.
An advocate at Britain's Soil Association, which oversees organic farming standards, also denounced the results as "damning" for the GM industry.
"They show that (the GM crop) would seriously exacerbate the decline of farmland wildlife - especially plants and birds," Gundula Azeez said.
"To reverse this decline, the government needs to seriously look at farming without chemicals."
Environment junior minister Elliot Morley described the study as "the biggest of its kind conducted anywhere in the world" and said it affirmed the government's "precautionary" policy of making "case-by-case decisions" on whether to approve GM crops.
The trial results will now go to the government's statutory advisory body - the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (ACRE).