Letter in The Times, 25 May 2000

>From the Marquess of Lansdowne

Sir,

We farm 540 acres of cereal land near Dunkeld in Perthshire. We have
adopted a simple 3 year rotation of winter wheat, spring barley,followed by
spring rape. We drilled the spring rape at the end of April. On  Friday May
19th we were notified by our seed merchants that our sample was contaminated by
approximately 0.4% of genetically modified seed. On Monday 22nd,I
instructed our contractors to spray off the crop with Gramoxone, destroying the
whole 65 hectares. We will now re-drill  this acerage with a pure seed
variety. This will incur extra costs and result in a lower yield.

The Ministry of Agriculture was informed that this consignment of seed
was contaminated on April  17- a fortnight before we sowed our crop. It must
be asked why those who had purchased the seed were not informed immediately
and, secondly, instructed by the ministry to destroy the seed (or the
crop if it had already been planted) to ensure GM plants are contained in
research environments only.  In Sweden, the Government is expected to
order all contaminated crops to be destroyed and pay compensation to the
farmers.

Yours faithfully,
LANSDOWNE
Bowood House,
Calne,
Wiltshire
SN11 OLZ

May24