13 April 2003

Blair adviser attacks Labour GM crops 'fix'

Local campaigners call for GM-free Britain election pledge

http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/press_releases/local_campaigners_call_for.html
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Blair adviser attacks Labour GM crops 'fix'
Antony Barnett and Mark Townsend
The Observer, Sunday April 13, 2003http://www.guardian.co.uk/gmdebate/Story/0,2763,936006,00.html

A key scientific adviser to Tony Blair has launched the most damaging attack yet on the Prime Minister's attempts to persuade the public to accept genetically modified crops.

Sir Tom Blundell, a Labour supporter appointed by Blair to chair the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution in 1998, has effectively accused ministers of a fix.

In a three-page letter leaked to the Observer, Blundell condemns ministerial efforts to have an independent scientific review of GM technology as 'artificial'. He warns that this will be completed before a public debate has even started.

His comments will encourage critics who claim Blair has already decided to introduce the GM crops into Britain's countryside. As a result of growing public disquiet, Ministers agreed last summer to launch a national public debate as well as an independent scientific and economic review of the technology.

Blair promised that any go-ahead for the commercialisation of GM crops would await the results of these reviews.

In a strongly-worded letter to Professor David King, the government's chief scientific adviser who is heading the scientific review, Blundell, professor of biochemistry at Cambridge University, casts doubt on the whole process.

'The national public debate is only just about to start and will hold its conferences, debates and meetings around the country between May and July and is not due to report until the autumn,' Blundell writes in the letter dated 19 March and copied to Downing Street's Strategy Unit.
'It seems impossible that the values articulated in that process could inform the science review or the Strategy Unit's economic study which are still due to publish their results in May and June respectively'.
The Royal Commission sees 'a real danger that their conclusion will already have been cast, or at least the public would be justified in perceiving that to be the case.' Blundell concludes: 'Without a clearer mechanism and better prospects for a fully integrated process, this opportunity will be wasted and an artificial result will be all that is achieved.'

Blundell's concern is given extra weight by the fact that completion of the farm trials - designed to discover whether GM crops affect the environment - has been delayed, and potentially controversial findings cannot now be discussed in the debate.

Pete Riley, food campaigner at Friends of Earth, said Blundell's comments 'strike right at the heart of the GM debate'. He said: 'This process was supposed to be about giving the public confidence that a proper review of all the issues would take place, but even Blair's most loyal scientific lieutenants now admits there is a real problem.'
Norman Baker, Liberal Democrat environment   spokesman, said: 'The decision has been taken to accept GM following tremendous pressure from the Americans. The Government is just going through the motions.'
The Science Review has been attacked as too pro-GM. At least a third of its 25 experts have strong pro-GM views, including consultants to a biotech firm owned by Science Minister Lord Sainsbury, a major Labour Party donor. But it is the criticism of the Royal Commission chairman that is likely to embarrass Ministers most.

A Department of Trade and Industry official refused to comment on the leak.

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GM seeds to overrun organic farmers, warn Euro-MPs - Tories wreck Green calls for consumer protection 

NEWS RELEASE
From the office of the Green MEPs
11 April,  2003

ORGANIC and conventional farmers face "considerable economic damage" - or even losing organic certification - after the European Parliament rejected Green proposals to limit GM contamination of seeds to the minimum level possible. MEPs in Strasbourg were considering a report by French Green Danielle Auroi calling for strict rules on the marketing of seeds designed to protect farmers and consumers from GM contamination.

But amendments proposed by Tory MEP and seed farmer Robert Sturdy loosening the restriction to "as low a level as practical" were adopted, with the support of Labour MEPs, meaning seeds sold as 'non-GM' could be contaminated with GM material beyond the levels preventing food from being labeled GM-free.

South-East England's Green MEP Caroline Lucas said: "The European Parliament's rejection of the Green position in favour of that proposed by the Tories' Rural Affairs spokesman is a disaster for conventional and organic farmers.

"Both will now find it increasingly difficult - and expensive to procure GM-free seeds able to guarantee the GM-free produce they need to produce to meet consumer demand.

"That means they will face higher costs and, in many cases, lower receipts and a real threat to their commercial viability. The farmers will lose - and so will consumers who have resoundingly demonstrated their aversion to GM produce at every opportunity."

ENDS

For more information please contact Ben Duncan on 020 7407 6280, 07973 823358 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

www.carolinelucasmep.org.uk

Ben Duncan
Green MEPs' Press Officer
Suite 58, The Hop Exchange, 24 Southwark Street, London SE1 1TY
020 7407 6280 (tel)
0776 997 0691 (mob)
020 7234 0183 (fax)
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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