Scientists urge close scrutiny of GM crops'
impact
By Robert Uhlig, Farming Correspondent
(Filed: 27/05/2003)
The ecological impact of genetically modified crops must be
closely
monitored in the long term if commercial planting goes ahead in
Britain,
the country's leading science academy warned the Government
today.
The Royal Society issued the warning in a submission to the GM
Science
Review, one of three investigations set up by the Government to
assess
whether to introduce commercial cultivation of GM crops.
The
Society did not say who should pay for the monitoring process, which
could
add to costs for farmers growing GM crops that already fetch a
lower market
price than non-GM varieties.
Prof Patrick Bateson, vice-president and
biological secretary of the
Society, said: "We advised the Government almost
five years ago that it
needed to carry out a review of the way in which the
environmental
impact of GM crops is monitored in the long term, but it still
hasn't
taken the necessary action.
"If the decision is taken to allow
commercial planting of GM crops, it
is essential that regulators in the UK
and EU monitor the environmental
impact to pick up any potentially beneficial
or harmful effects over a
long period. It will not be enough to make best
estimates at the start
and then assume that everything will turn out as
expected."
The Society also said that the GM Science Review panel should
be given
the opportunity to consider formally the results of the GM Farm
Scale
Evaluations.
The review, led by Prof David King, the
Government's chief scientist,
has been widely criticised for insisting on
reporting next month or in
July, two or three months before the results of
the farm scale trials
are likely to be published in the scientific journal
Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society: Biological
Science.
The four-year field assessment of the impact of commercial
scale
planting of GM crops on bio-diversity is the largest and most
extensive
project of its type undertaken.
Its results, which are
likely to heavily influence the Government's
decision on whether to license
herbicide resistant GM maize, sugar beet
and oil seed rape, will inform the
Government's own scientific review.
Prof Bateson said it would make sense
for the review panel to look at
the results of the farm scale trials and
"make recommendations to
Government in the light of this
research".