Daily Telegraph (UK)  Front Page
Friday 13 August 1999

Secure zone plan for GM crop testing
By Polly Newton, Political Staff

RADICAL plans to designate one tightly controlled area of Britain as a
genetically modified crop testing zone have been discussed by ministers.

This follows growing public concern about the risks posed by such foods.
The move would create a single high-security site on which big companies
such as Monsanto could plant experimental crops without threatening
contamination of nearby non-GM farms.

Supporters say it would also protect GM crops from the kind of damage
caused recently by protesters. Michael Meacher, the environment minister,
is among those known to favour further investigation of the proposal. But
campaigners against genetic modification condemned it yesterday as
unworkable and potentially dangerous.

Patrick Holden, the director of the Soil Association, said it could create
another "anthrax island", a reference to Gruinard, off north-west Scotland,
which was uninhabitable for more than 40 years after contamination with
anthrax spores during germ warfare experiments. "GM could cause
contamination for a very long time," he said.

The Soil Association, which offers a seal of approval to organic farmers
who meet certain standards, recently announced stringent new regulations to
take account of the potential effect of GM crop trials on organic produce.
It now insists on inspecting organic farms within six miles of any site
producing GM crops to ensure that there is no contamination.

The Government's advisory body, the United Kingdom Register of Organic Food
Standards, is also pressing ministers to agree to a six-mile "notification
zone" within which organic farmers would be consulted before any GM crop
trials.

Such guidelines would strengthen considerably the existing arrangements
which require GM crop testers to place advertisements in local papers
announcing their intention to begin trials. It is partly the register's
demand that has prompted ministers such as Mr Meacher to seek a radical
solution to the problem of potential contamination of organic produce.

The issue will be discussed next month by officials from the register, the
Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions and the Ministry
of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.

Peter Riley, of Friends of the Earth, said that the GM zone proposal did
not take account of the geographical spread of organic farms. It would be
virtually impossible to find any large piece of fertile land more than six
miles away from an existing organic farm.

"If the Government wants to find a zone for GM crops, it is going to have
to do it in the Pennines, where not much is going to grow." GM crops are
being tried at about 150 sites. Any proposal to test them in a single zone
on the kind of prime arable land necessary to ensure that a crop flourished
- - in East Anglia or Scotland, for example - would lead to a public outcry.

It could depress house prices and provoke legal claims from residents that
their property or health was under threat. Last month a host of powerful
signatories from all political parties signed a letter urging the Welsh
Assembly to ban all GM testing in Wales. 

There was scepticism within the GM food industry about the idea of a zone
for trials. Monsanto said the proposal assumed that all GM crops could be
grown on the same kind of soil. A designated zone could also act as a
magnet for protesters, the company said.

Although the locations of GM crop sites already have to be made public, a
readily identifiable zone could provide a focus for campaigners in the way
that Greenham Common did for anti-nuclear protesters in the 1980s.