The end for GM crops: Final British trial confirms threat to wildlife

[acmavm]

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=622479


By Steve Connor, Michael McCarthy and Colin Brown
22 March 2005

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Yet another nail was hammered into the coffin of the GM food industry in Britain yesterday when the final trial of a four-year series of experiments found, once more, that genetically modified crops can be harmful to wildlife.

The study was the fourth in a series that has, in effect, sealed the fate of GM in the UK - at least in the foreseeable future. They showed the ultra-powerful weedkillers that the crops are engineered to tolerate would bring about further damage to a countryside already devastated by intensive farming.

Only one of the four farm-scale trials, which have gone on for nearly five years, showed that growing GM crops might be less harmful to birds, flowers and insects than the non-GM equivalent - and even that was attacked as flawed, because the weedkiller the particular conventional crop required was so destructive it was about to be banned by the EU.

Even so, a year ago the Government gave a licence for that crop - a maize known as Chardon LL, created by the German chemical group Bayer - to be grown in Britain, thus officially opening the way for the GM era in Britain, to loud protests from environmentalists.

However, only three weeks later Bayer withdrew its application, suggesting the regulatory climate would be too inhibiting. That followed the withdrawal from Europe of the world leader in GM crops, the American biotech giant Monsanto, which also seemed to have tired of the struggle
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Ah, corporate America. Dedicated to destroying the planet while making a buck.

[pie]

1. GM crops and the law of unintended consequences

Between the rush to market and the iron clad control
of the seeds, we have created a massive setback to
development.
Whether they will eventually prove to be good or bad I do not know.