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3 items re Wolston - anyone wanting to express support for the RSPB might want to contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. :

1. Contamination row threatens GM trials
2. DECISION SOON ON GM CROP TRIALS
3. GM trials row intensifies
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1. Contamination row threatens GM trials

May 17: The government's three year programme of GM crops trials was in a state of collapse last night because of the bio-tech industry's refusal to withdraw a trial which may contaminate the country's premier organic research organisation. http://www.guardian.co.uk/gmdebate/Story/0,2763,492380,00.html

quote: "A member of the scientific committee overseeing the trials has decided to resign."
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2. DECISION SOON ON GM CROP TRIALS
Coventry Evening Telegraph May 15, 2001

A DECISION was expected to be made today on whether GM crops trials should go ahead at fields in Wolston. Members of the national Scientific Steering Committee have been debating whether the project near Ryton Gardens, should go ahead. Their view, expected today, will have a bearing on the decision by food firm Aventis and industry body Scimac, which are overseeing the trials.

 After the SSC meeting yesterday one member Dr Mark Avery, director of conservation for the RSPB, said: "We believe Scimac should plant elsewhere. There is no point in alienating the whole of the organic industry for the sake of one GM site."

Seeds manager for Aventis Dr Paul Rylott said: "We are awaiting a note from the SSC. It could go either way."

Environment secretary Michael Meacher believes the site is unacceptable but has no legal power to stop the trials.
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3. GM trials row intensifies
BBC Online Sci/Tech
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1334000/1-1334093.stm]
By BBC News Online's environment correspondent Alex Kirby

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) says it may resign from a committee supervising the UK trials of genetically modified (GM) crops. The RSPB opposes plans to plant a GM maize crop near a renowned organic farming research centre. Conservationists fear that pollen from the maize could contaminate plants at the centre. The RSPB says it will pull out of the committee if the trial goes ahead. The herbicide-tolerant maize is due to be planted on a farm at Wolston in Warwickshire, in the English Midlands. The farm is nearly three kilometres (two miles) from Ryton Organic Gardens. Cross-pollination The gardens are run by the Henry Doubleday Research Association and conduct trials on organic crops for the European Union and the UK Government. They also house an important organic seed bank. The Environment Minister, Michael Meacher, has said the GM trial should be moved to another site for fear the maize cross-pollinated with seeds at the centre, which would then lose its licence to grow organic crops. The RSPB, Europe's largest conservation charity, is a member of the independent scientific steering committee (SSC) appointed to design the scientific study of the farm trials of GM crops in various parts of the UK.

The trials are to see whether GM crops are neutral, negative or positive for wildlife. The sites for them are chosen by an agricultural industry body, Scimac (the Supply Chain Initiative on Modified Agricultural Crops). 'PR disaster' The RSPB has accused Scimac of "bungling the handling" of the trials, and says it will leave the SSC unless Scimac withdraws the Wolston site from the trials.

Dr Mark Avery, the RSPB's conservation director, told BBC News Online: "These trials need to be handled sensitively. "If the Wolston trial goes ahead it will look like an attempt to pick a fight with the organic movement. "Creating a public relations disaster, which Scimac seems intent on doing, will simply make it much more difficult for the scientific results to be taken on board by the public. "We told Scimac we would resign unless Wolston was taken off the list, and they appeared pretty unmoved."

 'Zero risk' A response by Scimac to the RSPB says: "In the absence of any scientific rationale for this decision, it is difficult for Scimac to understand the RSPB's position in issuing this demand."

 The statement reiterates Scimac's understanding that "the risk of cross-pollination over distances as large as three km is likely to be zero", and that therefore the organic centre faces no threat. Mr Meacher said last week he might have to test the law to see if he could intervene to stop the Wolston trial. He wrote to the SSC chairman, Professor Chris Pollock, on 10 May, asking whether the committee thought the Wolston farm was essential to the trials.

 Professor Pollock, in a letter released by Mr Meacher's department, says that "it is not within the SSC's remit to consider withdrawing individual sites" from the trials. The Environment Department told BBC News Online: "It's up to Scimac. They're legally entitled to plant where they choose, and there's nothing we can do about it."

 Privately, environmental groups say they believe Scimac would be happy to withdraw Wolston from the trials if the government said it should. But with the general election campaign in full swing, they think ministers are unwilling to intervene.