GM crop review urged
The Government has been warned to assess the long term benefits and disadvantages of commercially producing genetically modified crops (GM) by The Royal Society, a leading British academic body.
The warning came in a submission to the GM Science Review, a Government-backed body set up to investigate the viability of GM’s commercial cultivation.
Prof Patrick Bateson, vice-president and biological secretary of the Society, said: ‘We advised the Government almost five years ago that it needed to carry out a review of the way in which the environmental impact of GM crops is monitored in the long term, but it still hasn’t taken the necessary action.
‘If the decision is taken to allow commercial planting of GM crops, it is essential that regulators in the UK and EU monitor the environmental impact to pick up any potentially beneficial or harmful effects over a long period. It will not be enough to make best estimates at the start and then assume that everything will turn out as expected.’
The Society also encouraged the GM Science Review panel to reflect on the results of the GM Farm Scale Evaluations, a large scale assessment which is expected to publish its results in autumn.
If the panel heeds the Society’s advice, it would mean delaying the publication of their own review, due out in June.
The GM Farm Scale Evaluations will be published in the scientific journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Biological Science.
Peter Riley, campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said of the Society’s intervention: ‘If the Royal Society has concerns about the potential environmental impacts of GM crops, it should oppose their commercial development.
‘Long-term monitoring will not prevent damage that has already been caused. Biotech companies must not be allowed to turn our countryside into one huge outdoor experiment.’
