EXCERPT: "It's bad enough having a Prime Minister as a stooge of American foreign policy blunders, without having British agriculture also subservient to the unwholesome greed and ugly ambition of US biotech and agrochem corporations. The government and the NFU should both get out of bed with the "enemy" and try to remember where their backbone is supposed to be." (item 2)
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Consumers don't want GM crops
Farmers Weekly, 7 July 2006

NFU [National Farmers Union] President Peter Kendall claims that consumers will decide whether GM crops are grown in the UK (News, 23 June). Consumers have already made their position clear. The latest European survey states that "overall Europeans think that GM food should not be encouraged. GM food is widely seen as not being useful, as morally unacceptable and as a risk for society."

But the Government, and now the NFU, continues to plough ahead regardless with policies designed to pave the way for GM crops.

NFU vice-president Paul Temple says that setting the threshold for GM contamination too low "will cause problems". But the proposed threshold of 0.9% is also problematic. Food labelling laws say accidental contamination up to 0.9 % does not have to be labelled, but what is accidental?

An independent legal opinion has found that, if coexistence measures are designed to allow routine GM contamination of up to 0.9%, you are in fact planning to contaminate, and farmers would have to label the crop as GM.

Instead of effectively legalising GM contamination so farmers can grow crops for which there is no market, surely the Government and the NFU should be aiming to keep the UK GM free, enabling British farmers to meet market demands.

Clare Oxborrow
Friends of the Earth, Underwood Street, London
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GM Co-existence is Impossible
Farmers Weekly, 14 July 2006

There can be no co-existence between GM and non-GM flora (Talking Point, 30 June). Flowering plants used in agriculture are pollinated by wind-borne pollen, or by pollen transfer on insects. Farmers have no control of these.

Commercial growing of GM crops will contaminate the whole biosphere. It's basic botany. It is well known by all concerned. Those supposed to be entrusted with EU environmental protection also know that GM is a journey of no return.

It's bad enough having a Prime Minister as a stooge of American foreign policy blunders, without having British agriculture also subservient to the unwholesome greed and ugly ambition of US biotech and agrochem corporations.

The government and the NFU should both get out of bed with the "enemy" and try to remember where their backbone is supposed to be.

Stuart Pattison
Calstock, Cornwall.