Imported seeds tainted by GM: Government defends polluted crops planted in UK
By James Meikle (Thursday May 18, 2000, The Guardian)
Thousands of acres of crops tainted by GM pollen have been growing in Britain for more than a year and may have been used in food production, the government admitted last night in a move that is highly embarrassing for its scientific advisers, who had previously claimed there was little risk of cross-pollination with conventional crops.
Hundreds of farmers have unwittingly planted the contaminated seed over two spring seasons without the safeguards used for GM field trials, but ministers, whose officials had known about the problem for a month, insisted there was no risk to health or the environment.
The seeds came from the Canadian prairies, from plants that were growing more than 800 metres away from the nearest GM varieties but still picked up traces of modified material.
The tainted seed is thought to have been used on 9,000 hectares last year, nearly 2% of the rape crop. This year it has probably been used on 4,700 hectares, involving between 500 and 600 farmers.
It also emerged that there had been no random testing of imports of conventional seed for rogue GM material, despite the rapid spread of GM crops through the United States, Canada and Brazil. In this country no GM seeds are to be sold to farmers until after three years of farm trials to test their impact on the environment and wildlife.
Opposition parties immediately condemned ministers for the lack of proper controls on seeds, and for the delay and the low key announcement, made through a parliamentary written answer. The Liberal Democrats' environment spokesman, David Heath, said the delay and the manner in which the government announcement had been made was deeply disturbing. "It is another example of the contempt in which the government holds the British public," he said.
The Tory spokesman, Tim Yeo, accused the government of a "willingness to allow commercial considerations to override the need to protect the British environment".
The latest embarrassment came a day after it emerged that some British honey might have been contaminated by pollen from GM trials.
The seeds discovery was made during testing of imported seeds by the German state of Baden-Wurttemberg. The international company responsible, Advanta Seeds, was informed by one of its customers in the state. Its British arm was told on April 3, and took steps to stop further sales while it began its own testing; this revealed a GM presence of up to 1% in seeds grown in 1998 and sold over the past two years.
The company told government officials on April 17. It was worried because the GM oilseed rape which tainted the conventional seed had no commercial licences for sales to farmers in Europe, but it could not inform its distributors or farmers until the government acted.
"We are absolutely dismayed," said Mike Ruthven, general manager of Advanta Seeds UK. "We are very concerned for consumers, because of the sensitivity of these things. We believe we are extremely responsible and we are gobsmacked that this has happened with an orthodox crop."
He said the advice from the government so far was that no regulation had been broken, and there was no threat to health or the environment - "although we have had some difficulty in getting those statements".
The 1999 seed crop had not been contaminated because the company had by then moved its seed growing from Alberta, Canada, to Ontario in eastern Canada, Montana in the US, and New Zealand.
Oilseed rape is used in foods such as margarine and in industrial processes, but the GM material that has been available from abroad was passed as safe by government advisers several years ago.
The seed is also thought to have been used on 600 hectares in France, 500 in Sweden and 400 in Germany, causing international embarrassment and highlighting a lack of international regulation of seed purity.
Baroness Hayman, the agriculture minister, said there would be new spot checks on imports and work with the industry on a new code of practice: "This is not a safety issue... However, the issue of seed purity is a serious one."
© Copyright Guardian Media Group plc. 2000
Revealed: GM firm faked test figures: Poor crop results were replaced by a forgery, Ministry's internal paper shows
By Antony Barnett Public Affairs Editor (Sunday April 16, 2000, The Observer)
Results from vital Government-backed crop trials to assess genetically-modified seeds have been falsified, The Observer can reveal.
Internal minutes from the Ministry of Agriculture, obtained by this newspaper, show that an employee at a Suffolk-based firm, Grainseed, manipulated scientific data to make certain seeds in the trials appear to perform better than they really did.
This will cast a shadow over the Government's programme of GM trials, and further undermine public confidence in the controversial crop technology. MPs and environmentalists want the trials suspended.
Crucially, the trials involving Grainseed are being relied on by the Government to enable the first GM crop in Britain to be made commercially available to farmers.
Earlier this month, the Government proposed that a GM maize known as Chardon LL, which will be used as an animal feed, should be put on the National List of Seeds which farmers may buy.
MPs and environmentalists have already objected to this listing on the grounds that its potential environmental impact has not been properly assessed, and it could cross-pollinate with other crops. They say it has not been tested for food safety on cattle.
Labour's Alan Simpson said: 'This is confirmation of all our worst fears that the Government's GM policy is being driven by bad or fraudulent science. They are reliant on the industry that wants to sell these seeds to monitor the trials. This is insane, and criminally irresponsible. If data from one company has been falsified how do we know others have not been up to the same.'
The minutes give precise details of how the Grainseed employee manipulated his data. When the harvest showed that some crops were not doing as well as was hoped, he simply forged the results. It was only after an investigation by firm's managing director that the full extent of the fraud came to light.
The employee boosted the amount of the crop's 'dry matter' - a crucial measurement which shows how effective the maize would be in animal feed: the more dry matter, the better the crop.
The Ministry documents - taken from a meeting on 11 February, said: 'An employee of Grainseed altered the data from the... trials at Crewe so that they appeared to be within protocol for dry matter content at harvest.
'It appears that he then went on to manipulate the data on individual varieties which had the effect of increasing the dry matter yields of some and decreasing those of others.'
While the company's data from the 1999 trials have now been excluded, environmentalists are concerned that Grainseed's 1998 GM trial results are still being relied on by the Government.
Friends of the Earth believes all the data involving the GM maize should now be discarded. Pete Riley, the group's food campaigner, said: 'The whole process must be suspended and the trials declared null and void.
'How can the public have any confidence in a Government decision which is based on scientific data from a company which has been shown to produce fake data.'
An official at the Cabinet Office, which runs the Government's GM policy, said: 'We have a robust system in place to ensure we base decisions on sound science. This includes routine tests to double-check all data.
'Irregularities were identified in the data supplied by Grainseed. All of the affected data from this year was discounted... and had no bearing on the proposed list[ing] of Chardon LL.'
In the trials Grainseed was acting as an agent for the British Plant Breeders Society. This body is run by Roger Turner, who is a senior figure in SCIMAC, the key organisation responsible for commercialising GM technology and for finding trial sites.
Nobody at Grainseed was prepared to comment.
© Copyright Guardian Media Group plc. 2000
Carl
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