Now here's a funny thing. On the eve of the publication of the GM farmscale trials last year up sprang a series of stories about vandals and extremists disrupting british science. these all traced back to Lord Taverne's biotech/pharma industry backed lobby group Sense About Science. And now with today's publication of the GM winter oil seed rape farmscale trials up pops another wave of such stories.

These have been made fresh by coming from the institutes rather than direct from Taverne's lobby group. The John Innes Centre, whose head is quoted here bemoaning the publication of details of where GM crop trials are being held, is listed among the backers of Sense About Science - see profile at www.gmwatch.org

Note also in this article that Bayer CropScience's PR man, Julian Little, tells The Telegraph: "We are hoping that new legislation which clamps down on animal rights protesters may be used to apply to us as well..." If not that then the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill might do the job.

Why the need for new legislation? It's not that there aren't laws under which those who pull up GM crops can be prosecutred. The problem is that anything that goes near a jury is likely to lead to a not guilty verdict on the grounds that the defendants actions were justifiable. In the case of the greenpeace prosecution, it may be remembered, the jury even stayed on afterwards to congratulate the defendants on their acquital.

Clearly the law needs changing!
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Extremists' protests halt GM crop trials
By Duncan Gardham
Daily Telegraph, Monday 21 March
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/03/21/ngm21.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/03/21/ixhome.html

Genetically modified crop trials have been effectively halted in Britain because of protests by environmental activists, scientists said yesterday.

The country's leading centre for GM crop research said it had been forced to move trials abroad or end them entirely because they were constantly torn up by protesters.

Prof Ian Crute, director of the Government-backed research unit at Rothamsted, Herts, said: "Every time we attempt a field trial of a new laboratory-created variety, extremists come along and dig up our plants."

No trials had been attempted for the past 18 months, he added. "We have had to export our experiments to other countries and they are the ones who will reap the benefits."

Commercial GM companies halted their involvement when farm-scale crop trials ended two years ago and, although the results are due out today, they are unlikely to go ahead with using the technology unless attitudes change.

Dr Julian Little, spokesman for Bayer CropScience, told The Telegraph: "We are hoping that new legislation which clamps down on animal rights protesters may be used to apply to us as well, but there is an impasse in the EU that means we cannot grow our crops commercially anyway."

Chris Lamb, the head of the John Innes research centre in Norwich, said the Department for the Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (Defra) had added to problems by insisting on the publication of sensitive information.

"Every trial we carry out has to be published on a website on which the site's six-digit grid reference is given," he said. "You may as well put up an illuminated sign and invite campaigners to dig it up."

Rothamsted, founded in 1843, is the world's oldest agricultural research station, and carries out GBP27 million of research every year, funded largely by Defra and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. [formerly headed by a director of Syngenta!]

Most of the trials conducted there and at the John Innes research centre are small-scale attempts to grow crops that have been developed in the laboratory. As such they are more vulnerable to attack by protesters.

There are fears that the vandalism could cause a scientific brain drain on the same scale caused by attacks by animal activists. Dr Little said he hoped that the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill might come to the scientists' aid.

"Trashing our fields has been the least of our problems. Our staff have been intimidated, things have been scrawled on their property and there have been site invasions," he said. "In the end it is pointless because we have simply moved our research to Canada, the US and Australia and there is a knock-on effect on researchers who won't stay in this country."

Rothamsted researchers are understood to have moved their trials to eastern Europe and China. They have been trying to grow gluten-free wheat and rape which would provide healthy oils to replace those found in fish.

Today the Royal Society will publish the results of 70 farm-scale studies of GM winter oil seed, produced by Bayer CropScience.

The crops are able to withstand spraying with poisons that kill weeds and insects, but there has been concern about the effects this might have on the wider environment.