Press Notice from GM Free Cymru, 23 February 2003
SECRET GM CROP EXPERIMENTS USED TERMINATOR GENES
Environmental and consumer groups across the UK are furious that GM oilseed rape crops grown across the UK within the
"farm scale evaluations " programme have contained highly controversial terminator genes. Such genes create male
sterility in the plants and make it impossible to save seed for future use. Farmers have protested strongly about this
technology, and understood that the biotechnology multinationals had agreed to phase it out. Biologists are also very
concerned, because the insertion of terminator genes into plants makes them behave in very erratic and unpredictable
ways.
The use of this technology in the FSE oilseed rape trials -- about 150 in all -- has been kept secret by Bayer
CropScience (the seed owners) and DEFRA. However, Dr Mae-wan Ho and Dr Joe Cummins, two scientists working for the
Institute for Science in Society, have undertaken painstaking research which has revealed how the GM oilseed rape plants
have been engineered. They are extremely worried by what they have found, since some of the genetic components of the GM
plants could wreak havoc when they spread to non-GM varieties and related weeds. The "doomsday scenario" is that
sterility could spread across populations of brassicas (like broccoli, mustard and cauliflower) and also of wild
relatives, and ultimately lead to their extermination.
GM Free Cymru has now asked for an urgent Parliamentary Question to be addressed to the Secretary of State for the
Environment on this issue. Spokesman Dr Brian John said: "NGOs across the country feel that we have been betrayed on
this issue. There has been total secrecy about the use of these terminator genes in the GM oilseed rape trials. We knew
that "off the record" trials had been under way within the FSE programme, for seed planting densities have been going up
year on year, and we have never had a satisfactory explanation for this. Then on 30 January Margaret Beckett gave a hint
in Parliament that there was something different about the GM oilseed rape varieties being used in Britain as compared
with varieties planted in Canada and the USA. Now we know what has been going on. There has been deceit and evasion at
every turn, and the Farm-scale Evaluations of GM crops are revealed as having very sinister side-effects."
ENDS
for further info please contact Dr Brian John on 01239-820470
For the full I-SIS Report click on this link: