INDEPENDENT (London) / 19 May 2000 / By Paul Waugh, Political Correspondent
Labour MPs combined with the Opposition yesterday to demand a tightening of genetically modified crop controls in respone to the revelation that GM seeds had been mistakenly planted across the country.
The Ministry of Agriculture admitted on Wednesday that, over the past two years, 34,000 acres of countryside had been planted with GM oilseed rape. In an emergency statement, Nick Brown, the Minister of Agriculture, stressed that the oilseed rape stocks distributed by Advanta Seeds UK posed no threat to human health or the environment. Mr Brown said he regretted the incident but said the Government was taking steps to improve seed purity.
Labour backbenchers lined up alongside Liberal Democrats and Tories to call for the destruction of the crops that had been planted and urged ministers to take more radical action. Joan Walley, the MP for Stoke-on-Trent North, said the Government should be prepared to trace the crops and order their destruction.
Alan Simpson, the Labour MP for Nottingham South, saidfarmers had been seduced by the biotech industry. He said: "These GM gigolos have been touring the country but farmers are now discovering that ... the industry has rogered their fields and run off in the morning without being willing to accept the responsibility for the contamination which follows."
Mr Simpson suggested there should be a Farm Support Agency along the lines of the Child Support Industry as there were "widespread implications" for farm incomes if they could not guarantee their produce was GM-free.
David Drew, the Labour MP for Stroud, said Britain should tell the US and Canada that unless they signed up to the Montreal Biosafety Protocol, the Government would ban imports unilaterally, "just as they have taken unilateral action on BSE". For the Liberal Democrats, David Heath said the affair had done considerable damage to the reputation for openness of Mr Brown's ministry. The mistake had, he said also destroyed the "credibility" of import controls on GM crops and "made a nonsense" of separation distances.
Tim Yeo, the Tory Agriculture spokesman, warned Mr Brown that failure to impose safeguards around the contaminated crops would increase public pressure to destroy all of the affected plants.
(posted without permission)
