Here comes the latest attempt to make GM sugar beet look good from Mike May et al at Brooms Barn -a research station with a long history of collaboration - some might say collusion - with the biotech industry that has included pre-publication press tours and a pattern of hyping trial "results" to the media.

"We doubt that this last ditch attempt (by Mike May et al) to save GM sugar beet will have much credibility with regulators or farmers" (item 1)

"(Mike) May's research claimed to show major savings for farmers taking up GM sugar beet but working farmers ...quickly spotted... that the paper had exaggerated by as much as 75% the costs of a conventional herbicide regime." (item 2)

1.GM Sugar Beet Research Leaves Wildlife Short of Grub
2.More on GM beet researcher Mike May
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1.GM Sugar Beet Research Leaves Wildlife Short of Grub
PRESS RELEASE
Immediate Release

New research on GM sugar beet published tomorrow (1) shows that different crop management will leave the UK's farmland wildlife short of food at some stage in the year.

The research carried out by the UK's only sugar beet research centre (Brooms Barn) shows that all three GM sugar beet management approaches so far proposed fail to provide weeds and weed seeds for farmland in every season.

"They can enhance weed seed banks and autumn bird food availability compared with conventional management, *or* provide early season benefits to invertebrates and nesting birds, depending on the system chosen". (our emphasis)

Research published in 2003 on the Farm Scale Evaluations found that GM sugar beet spraying was significantly more damaging to wildlife than the management of conventional crops.

Brooms Barn used two techniques on the GM beet to increase weed cover or seed production - band spraying in the early season or delayed spraying. Only one technique can be applied to the crop.

Commenting, Five Year Freeze Director, Pete Riley said

"The choices offered by GM sugar beet cropping appear to offer farmland birds three options: insufficient food through out the year, early season food or autumn food. This is bad news for resident birds which need food all year round. Brooms Barn's proposal makes sugar beet more complicated and they neglect to tell us how growing regimes will be monitored and enforced and crucially who will pay for these essential requirements. We doubt that this last ditch attempt to save GM sugar beet will have much credibility with regulators or farmers"

ENDS

1. May M (et al) Management of genetically modified herbicide tolerant sugar beet for spring and autumn environmental benefit Proc. R. Soc. B. 19th January 2005.

Calls to Pete Riley 07903 341065
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2.More on GM beet researcher Mike May

for all the links to source material:
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=36

Brooms Barn focuses on agricultural research and development in sugar beet. Although financed principally through the sugar beet industry, it also undertakes work directly sponsored by commercial companies.

Dr Mike May, and another Brooms Barn scientist Alan Dewar, hit the headlines in 1999 when The Guardian ran a story 'Test experts paid by GM firm' about a conflict of interest between their leading role in the UK Government's GM Farm Scale Evaluations and they're having already been commissioned by one of the companies whose crops they were testing for the department of the environment. Dewar and May have also undertaken research for Monsanto.

In January 2003 Dewar and May were among the authors of 'A novel approach to the use of genetically modified herbicide tolerant crops for environmental benefit' (Proceedings of The Royal Society B, 270 (1513), 335-340). According to their co-author and Brooms Barn's director, John Pidgeon, 'This is the first time research has shown that GM herbicide-tolerant crops can be managed for environmental benefit.' But, in fact, this Monsanto-supported research was just the latest to be presented in this way by scientists from Brooms Barn.

Five years earlier in 1998 Monsanto conducted press tours of GM crop trials with late-growing weeds run by Dewar and May, provoking a lot of positive publicity about the environmental impact of Monsanto's GM sugar beet. Dewar was quoted as enthusiastically saying, 'It was obvious to see that the weedy plots were heaving with life.' The Times ran the headline, 'Modified crops help man and wildlife', and told its readers, 'Genetically engineered crops can save farmers money, reduce chemical spraying and create a better habitat for birds and insects, scientists claimed yesterday.'

When, nearly two-years later Dewar and May's paper on the research was finally published in Pest Management Science (April 2000), it turned out that the delayed herbicide application involved in the trials produced a massive yield penalty that farmers would be unlikely to accept.

Following on from the 2003 paper Mike May authored a further paper 'Economic Consequences for UK farmers of growing GM herbicide tolerant sugar beet (Annals of the Association of Applied Biologists, (2003) 142: 41-48 - May is General Secretary of the Association of Applied Biologists). May's research claimed to show major savings for farmers taking up GM sugar beet but working farmers belonging to the independent farmers' group, FARM, quickly spotted from their experience of beet-growing that the paper had exaggerated by as much as 75% the costs of a conventional herbicide regime. This had the effect of making the GM herbicide regime appear financially attractive. When compared to the real cost, there was little financial benefit from the GM crop and for many farmers with lower weed burdens a financial penalty. According to FARM, the paper also overlooked other costs associated with a GM crop which taken together would have the effect of seriously increasing rather than decreasing growing costs. (Brooms Barn research on GM savings vastly exaggerated
http://www.farm.org.uk/FM_Content.aspx?ID=78 )