Government consider GM crop U-turn

Government considers GM crop U-turn
The Government will consider widening the isolation distances between genetically modified crops and other fields, Environment Minister Michael Meacher said today.
He was commenting after it was revealed by Friends of the Earth that GM pollen was found by scientists four and half kilometres from an official trial site.
The Government's rules for farm-scale trials require a 15 metre separation distance between GM crops and other fields. But Friends of the Earth said the results, the first published monitoring results of GM pollen from a farm-scale trial site, show that it travelled further than previously detected and underlined the scale of the threat the trials pose to non-GM and organic farmers, bee-keepers and the wider environment.
The GM crop pollen was discovered during a monitoring and analysis programme organised by FoE around Model Farm, near Watlington in Oxfordshire. The monitoring was carried out during June and July 1999 by the National Pollen Research Unit at University College Worcester and a bee specialist.
Mr Meacher, in Bournemouth for the Labour conference, was asked if the Government would extend the cordon sanitaire.
He replied: "I think we do have to consider that. These have been internationally acceptable distances.
"All of this goes to our statutory advisers, the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment. They examine it and they know perfectly well the proportion which could escape beyond these distances, either by wind or by bees.
"They take that into account in the risk assessment that they always make with regard to every application for a consent to market or for research purposes. But I do accept that we should look further at this again and we may well have to extend those distances in order to minimise still further the proportion of any possible cross pollination."
The latest study looked at pollen carried by bees and in the air. It showed that all six beehives monitored, which were located between 500 metres and 4.5 kilometres from the GM oil seed rape crop, were found to contain GM pollen.
Airborne GM pollen was found up to 475 metres from the trial site.
Earlier, a spokesman for the Government's GM communications unit had said: "There's absolutely no question of the farm-scale programme being halted.
"The trials are vital if we are to know what effect, if any, GM crop production might have on our wildlife.
"Possible pollen transfer is something the Government has looked at very closely and continues to do so.
"We have international crop separation distances and the Government's top independent advisers, the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (ACRE), concluded that the risks of pollination beyond this were minuscule.
"Crops can only pollinate closely related species and over time and distance the pollen becomes less effective. However, we will continue to closely monitor this and will look at Newsnight's data."
The Government was forced to admit that previous trials of winter oil seed rape were illegal after a court challenge by Friends of the Earth showed that the rules governing consent for such trials had been broken.